


The Rift

by clockworkgirl221



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/F, Goulies and Ghosties and Blue-White Rifties, M/M, Nerdy References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkgirl221/pseuds/clockworkgirl221
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel and Kurt are Lima's last hope against the spirits who are escaping through the infamous Rift. There there be dragons, ghosts, and some deadly secrets. Fic written circa 2010-2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pilot - The Rift

Public school. It was a big change from the hallowed hall of Dalton Academy, but it wasn't a big chunk out of his family's budget anymore, and especially with all the hospital bills from his dear sister and that liver transplant a month ago, it was saving them a ton of money. He would miss his old school though, especially his friends Wes and David. Plus the kids here in Lima seemed to think that William McKinley was a strange place.

Which Blaine noticed as well when he saw how jittery everyone was about him. One guy even came up and passed a hand over Blaine, like he was making sure the new kid was  _real_. "Oh thank god," he said, and ran away.

Blaine took note of his mannerisms and decided he was one of the 'messes' the band Bowling For Soup was talking about in their song 'High School Never Ends.'

At lunch, he was offered a seat next to some friendly-looking football boys. Finn, Puck and Mike talked about the cliques of the school: the football team, the band-geeks, the cheer-squad, and,  _of course_ , Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry.

"What do you mean 'of course?'" Blaine asked as several of the Cheerios decided to join the football team.

"Are you talking about Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry?" A blonde girl with a perky ponytail asked. She was introduced as Britanny.

Blaine nodded, "What's… What's so special about them?"

"They're out-of-the-closet, for one thing," Mike said, "Which is totally awesome for them. I mean, I'm not gay, but it's totally awesome for a couple of awesome freaks like them to be out…"

Blaine decided to keep it down about his own sexuality, just in case being a jock and being gay was taboo. It hadn't been at Dalton, but Blaine didn't want to take any chances.

"The other thing," another beautiful blonde, named Quinn, said, rolling her eyes at Mike, "since being gay isn't  _as horrifying_  as other things here, is that Rachel and Kurt are the two people standing in the way between us and… them," she said, pointing upwards.

Blaine hadn't looked up at the ceiling since entering the building, but when he did— _Oh-hell-no_ —he noticed the wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… space-time… blue-white…  _tear_ that was there. "What… what the  _hell_  is that?"

"That's the Rift," Finn said, following Blaine's hazel eyes. "That the opening to the Spirit World. Only people who are registered as students and faculty can see it, for some odd reason. Oh… and psychics. But here, only Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry are actual psychics. So they protect the school and this world from…  _that world_."

Blaine was in awe of this place all ready. It certainly would be a lot more…  _different_  from Dalton.

***

After learning that being gay was definitely not as horrifying as the Rift that was floating above his head, Blaine came out to nods and finger-pointing about who else was gay in the group (so far, Karofsky was grudgingly all gay, Quinn, Santana and Britanny were bisexual, and Puck just didn't care who he hit on, but the rest were either questioning/experimenting or all straight). He was also pointed in the direction of the soccer team (Blaine's sport of choice was a year-round league that centered at McKinley, thank goodness), which he signed on for right away, just as the bell for his fourth period Spanish class was sounding.

On his way down the eerily dark hall (save for the light from that damned Rift), he suddenly found it a bit cold. Others looked around nervously, but they seemed safe. Blaine continued his way. If this school had a spiritual police of two psychics, then Blaine would continue to attend… not like his parents could actually see what was going on anyway. They weren't students or faculty. They'd never believe him. He was stuck, apparently, at a haunted school.  _Great._

"Who this? A new kid for me to play with…?" a voice said. Blaine paused, looking around him. "Oh, you won't find me, pretty little human boy…" the voice hissed again. "I'm a tricky little girl, always playing my pranks. You don't have any amulets or jewelry on you, tsk tsk…"

"What? Who are you? Are you one of the spirits of the Rift?" Blaine asked, turning in circles like a puppy might chase his tail.

"Oh no, funny little boy. They would let me into the rift. Tricksy little girls who kill themselves over teachers don't get access unless they stay with the dragons. Dragons didn't like little tricksy Suzy. Didn't like her at all…"

Blaine was suddenly without his books, as they had clattered to the floor. "What the—What did you do and why didn't I see it?"

"I merely swatted at your books. You're not wearing repellent, so that Hummel boy hasn't gotten to you, and I can play with you all I want." Suzy replied. "You're on my turf, as well, so I get to play with you all the way until the class bell rings, making you late to Mr. Schuester's class," the girl… ghost…  _thing_  let out a high-pitched giggle at made everyone else in the hallway cover their ears.

"Wait, repellant? What the hell is going on here?" Blaine shouted.

Suddenly, there was a girl wearing what looked like something Blaine's grandma would wear swinging a silver pendent at thin air. Suzy was screaming and whining, but all too soon she was gone. The girl looked down at Blaine and knelt down, helping the curly-haired male get his books into place.

"Sorry about her. Obviously, you didn't check in with Kurt or me when you arrived. Those jocks forgot to tell you, I guess," the brunette mused, handing Blaine his books and standing up straight. Blaine followed her, and she stuck out her hand, "I'm Rachel Berry, one of the Paranormal Police, as we're called here."

"Blaine Anderson. And… thanks for saving me, I guess."

"Saving you? Oh dear. Suzy Pepper is a harmless poltergeist compared to some of the characters that come out of the Rift. Anyway. Since you're new, you can have this pendent. Poltergeists hate silver like the plague, so she'll stay away from you if you wear anything silver. All students now wear silver to get away from Suzy," Rachel said, swinging behind the boy and clasping the necklace around his neck. "It may be girly, but you can take it off and replace it with more manly silver jewelry if you wish."

Blaine fiddled with the little figurine in the pendent: a little canary, it looked like. He suddenly saw a flash of a face, something of a memory. A woman's face, beautifully hallow-looking, with long, wavy brown hair and eyes like crystal, flashing green then blue then grey. The image faded, and Blaine was back in the dark hall, the light from the Rift shining down on him and Rachel. He stared at Rachel for a moment, getting his land-legs back, so to speak. "A-Anything else I should know about this school?"

"The Rift is the boundary between the Spirit World and our world?" Rachel prompted.

"Was told that," Blaine replied, nodding his head.

"My best friend Kurt and I are the only people here that can save you from the spirits that leak out of the Rift?"

"Told that too."

"We happen to be the only psychics around as well?"

"Yeah, kinda knew that as well."

"Only people registered here as students or faculty can see the spirits," Rachel said, sure that the boy didn't know  _that_.

"Knew that too," Blaine replied, smirking lightly.

"Well… you're on your way, Mr. Anderson. Just… beware of what can leak out of the Rift. Kurt and I have gotten into some sticky situations, and they  _have_  involved people from this school. We wouldn't want you going crazy or leaving us or anything," Rachel replied.

The bell for class rang, and Blaine was reminded he had a class. "Shit. I'm late…"

Rachel smiled, "Have a good rest of the afternoon, Blaine Anderson…"

"You too… uh… Rachel Berry…" Blaine said, running for the door to the classroom without looking back.

Rachel sighed and took out her phone. "Stupid jocks not telling him to check in with us," she muttered as she sent a text to the only person who would really listen to her.

 _New guy. Didn't check in. Suzy up to her usual tricks_. –Rachel

 _New kid? We don't have a lot of those. We'll have to keep tabs on his assimilation in WMHS. See to it that he doesn't get hurt in his first few days. I'm glad you go on patrol in your free time, Rach._  –Kurt

 _Kurtie… he blanked out when I put your pendent around his neck. Think he's… awakening like I did?_  –Rachel

 _Keep an eye on the new kid for now, Rach. I'll meet you after school by the angel._ –Kurt

***

Blaine's new house was a quaint little house, a perfect size for a recluse sister, her parents, and her brother, now the proud owner of a silver pendent to ward of poltergeists at his new school. What was odd about the house was that it was made of wood, but the porch and walkway were littered with little stone angels. Blaine's mother and father thought the angels quaint and pretty, even though they were much too lifelike for Blaine's taste.

His little sister, Mallory, ever since getting her transplant (and even before) had been hospitalized too frequently to go to school, so she was taken out to be homeschooled. Blaine's mother was thrilled to have something to do at home besides be the housewife that she just kept Mallory at home at taught her herself. Blaine's father worked in insurance, and kept a roof over the family's head, as well as food on the table. With Blaine as the only child going to school, the family was able to send him to Dalton Academy for Boys. Then Mallory had been terribly sick, and a liver transplant was the only thing that would save her. The Andersons couldn't pay both Dalton's tuition and for Mallory's transplant, so Blaine was now at William McKinley, and the family moved to Lima as the best transplant center was there, as well as Blaine's new school.

Blaine hardly spoke to his parents as he slammed the front door and climbed up the old, winding steps to his bedroom. There were only two bedrooms on the second floor, but there was an awesome attic bedroom at the top of the steps, and Blaine had claimed this one as his own.

As he threw his backpack on the floor and flopped onto his stomach on unmade bed, he suddenly thought back to the face he had seen when Rachel had put the pendent around his neck. Flipping over to his back, he took another look at the silver canary on the silver chain. Rachel had given to him to be his, but before it was his… who's was it? If it was one of the psychics' pendent, then… did he just have a little psychic moment rub off on him? Was it was one time deal?

He decided it was silly, that he wasn't a psychic now and he certainly wouldn't just…  _become_  one now. It was impossible. Just like… Rifts into the Spirit World and poltergeists and psychic humans who happened to be homosexuals.  _Oh-god-no-this-isn't-happening._

***

"He blanked?" the male said, handing his friend a Popsicle. He was enjoying a dipped cone. The ice-cream man had been around the block right before Rachel had gotten there.

Rachel touched the stone angel and nodded, "He jumped; like he had seen a vision or a spirit of a loved one—" here she got a slight glare from her partner in crime, but she continued, "—or something. And that was your pendent before you gave it to me to hand out to him," she added.

Kurt looked away from Rachel at that point. "My mom gave me that pendent. I don't know why I gave it to you for damage control with Suzy Pepper…" he mused, mostly to himself.

"Well… it's his now. If he was psychometric or something, the memories would go away," Rachel replied.

Kurt nodded and looked back at his friend, taking her free hand gently. "Oh Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry?"

"Yes, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel?" Rachel replied, grinning at their little inside joke.

"Tell me about this new kid? What have you gathered from the group that adopted him and his teachers and classmates?"

Rachel grinned, "He's a soccer player for the William McKinley Four Season Soccer League now… pretty good little forward, from the way he moved at practice today. That's why I was late…"

"Noted," Kurt replied… curtly.

"Puck said he was gay, but since he's a jock he might be soon taken by Karofsky," Rachel said, a hint of warning in her voice.

Kurt didn't notice the warning, nor did he make any other movement to tell Rachel he was interested. Rachel moved on, disappointed that no other gay guys seemed to pique her best friend's interest (anymore). It was like he wasn't gay but…  _asexual_  nowadays.

"He's a good student from his grades at his last school, comes from a decent family, though his sister is in and out of the hospital, poor thing… and… nothing out of the ordinary. Today must have been his first time, or something," Rachel replied.

"Or something. He might not even be a psychic," Kurt replied. "I wouldn't know the signs, either, as I was born one… you know about these… awakenings… far better than me," he said cryptically.

But Rachel knew what he was getting at. Another thing struck her mind, "Oh! The other thing is… he's moved into the… the Angel house."

Kurt's blue-green-grey eyes widened and he turned to look at his companion with them, "Oh no. When was this?"

"Only this past weekend," Rachel replied, her brown eyes matching him in width and emotion.

"Then they've noticed the intruders and will be attacking soon…" Kurt replied. "Did you warn him when you went on damage control, my precious Gooseberry?" he asked, both psychics pausing in their slow, thoughtful walk.

"I didn't learn this until after he had gone home when I asked Jacob for his file," Rachel replied, putting her hand over her mouth. "Should we… should we go over there now and warn the family?"

"No… no. We'll have to get them back into the Rift. We knew it would happen someday that someone would disturb the peace by moving in. The Angels had a deal that if they lived peacefully outside in the form of stone angels they could stay and watch over their beloved house," Kurt replied, sighing, "And the only way we're going to be able to keep an eye on the new kid is if we keep him here in  _this_  world."

Rachel nodded along with him, pulling him toward her house using their still clasped hands.

"I'll write him a note, and you deliver it, all right? Tell him to make sure his family gets out. Then we'll be able to eradicate the Angels from their stone homes and it'll be like nothing happened," Kurt told his partner in crime.

Rachel nodded, "I heard from Jacob that his father is usually away on the weekends. And that his mother and sister go on little mother-daughter dates on Saturdays. How much time do we need?"

"Oh, for the Angels? A lovely Saturday afternoon," Kurt replied, grinning cheekily at Rachel.

She mirrored his grin, "Of course, the great Kurt Hummel has a plan involving his faithful sidekick, the lovely Ms. Berry, right?"

"You have  _always_  been a part of my plans. Ever since our freshman year," Kurt replied sighing happily, "Now come on, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry. Let's go study for the doom that is our morning Chemistry test, and then warn a certain new kid of the danger lurking at his house."

Rachel nodded, and with her Popsicle stick, saluted her friend with a rather drunken swagger. Kurt laughed and they continued on their way to Rachel's beautiful two-story house, the only one painted pink on a street full of drab grey and white ones. It paid to have to fabulously gay dads.


	2. Don't Blink

Blaine's first day had been a Thursday. Monday and Tuesday had been Mallory's heart-wrenching days at the hospital before and after the transplant. Wednesday, Blaine and his father spent their time packing things in boxes and bringing them down to the new house in the truck and then unpacking.

That was when Blaine started to notice that when he turned his back on the stone angels lining the walkway, they seemed to have had moved maybe only a millimeter. But Blaine noticed them. His father did not.

Maybe that was the beginning of what Rachel thought were the 'awakenings' of his 'psychic power.' But Blaine was not thinking about that right that second.

It was now Friday, and Blaine was reading a note written in an almost  _delicate_  handwriting. The note read:  _"You're in danger. Those angels lining your walk are possessed, so to speak, by very unstable, very revengeful spirits. Now that you and your family are living there, they will want to make you go away._

_Don't. Blink. When you look at them, don't blink. Turn your whole body away from them and they won't notice you. Long story short, they're like newborn babies that way. If they can't see your face, they will think you're just not there._

_When you look directly at them, don't. Blink. They'll attack you quick as lightening and take you into the Rift if you do. Hold tight until I come to eradicate them._

_See you Saturday!"_

Blaine's eyes widened and he looked around the hallway, looking for Rachel or Kurt. The latter he hadn't even  _met_  and here he was, writing him a note telling him he was in danger. Blaine took his phone out carefully and expertly added Kurt's phone number in his contacts. Kurt had coyly written his phone number in the corner, in a smaller font than his message.

Oh yes. This school was  _much different_  from Dalton…

***

Blaine got out his car and looked behind him at the stone angels.  _Oh-god-they-moved_. He backed up, still staring at them. He could feel their eyes on him, watching him right back. When he got to the door, he checked to see if it was open with his hand behind his back on the doorknob. Then he spun around quickly, his back now to the stone angels as he unlocked the door and rushed inside.

He went to the kitchen and looked out at the backyard, trying to think about how his family handled the angels outside. His father wouldn't be home tonight, thank god. But Mr. Anderson usually didn't even look at the angels (their faces, at least). Not that he was in danger as soon as Saturday came around… he wouldn't even be  _home_  until Sunday.

Blaine's mother was a matured woman, who had thought the angels to be quaint, but didn't really pay attention to them. She never even noticed how lifelike they were, nor did she really look at them since both she and Blaine's father had been house-hunting.

And Mallory? Mallory had taken one look at the angels and had said, "They're creepy, mom!"

Smart pre-teen girl. Then again, her big brother was Blaine Anderson, who had placed in the top ten back at Dalton.

So Mrs. Anderson had told her that because they were moving there anyway, she could just look at the pathway until the angels were behind her. They had chosen this house mostly because it was cheap, and they had little money left over from the operation to do much spending. It was still a cozy home with pretty front and back yards. Mallory had gotten a puppy for a post-operation present, so the backyard was fenced conveniently for little Dodger (who did look like the puppy-version of the his namesake in  _Oliver and Company_ ). As it were, Blaine was given a kitten (as the neglected sibling, and also as an apology for moving him into a new school). The first thing he had done was put the kitten on his shoulder and said, "She has a Time Lord!"

Mallory thought it'd be cute to name the kitten Oliver, but Blaine turned that idea down. He wanted to call it Crookshanks after Hermione's cat ( _Harry Potter_ ), but it wasn't a ginger cat. It was a small black cat with white paws and a little patch of fur that looked like a crescent moon. He had nixed the name Serena (Mallory had made him watch _Sailor Moon_  after he had come home from school when it was still running) as soon as the thought entered his mind.

Blaine was jostled out of his relieving thoughts (his family wouldn't be snatched by…  _whatever_  was lurking behind the stone eyes of the stone angels lining his walk) by the little kitten. He picked her up and kissed her head, "Hello to you too, Loony Luna Lovegood." So he had still gone with the  _Harry Potter_  reference after all.

He gently put the kitten down and whispered, "Don't look directly at them, Loony. They're not little Nargles that can be dealt with. They need special paranormal police people to eradicate them…" he thought about it for a moment, "Though I guess animals have a bit of this psychic stuff about them…"

Blaine finally went to the refrigerator and took out something to eat, keeping a sharp eye on the angels…  _who in turn kept a sharp eye on him_.

 _I will never get used to this._  Blaine thought as he spun around to show his back to them. He ate quickly in the kitchen and ran up to his room, shutting the blinds without even looking out the window. He kept the blinds open on the other window, as that only opened to the backyard, where Dodger was asleep in the springtime sun.

***

 

Luna found him curled up under the window, either afraid of the angels, bored out of his mind studying for a test he didn't have until Monday, or contemplating calling the number Kurt gave him. She mewled and he looked at her shaking his head, "I don't know what I'm more afraid of, the angels or freaking Kurt Hummel…"

Luna might have understood her owner, as she padded over to the phone and pushed at it with her nose, much like the Tramp did with the meatball in  _Lady and the Tramp_. Blaine picked up the phone, sat up, and dialed the number on the note, which was front and center on top of his History notes.

"Hello, Kurt Hummel here. Blaine Anderson, I presume?" the other voice asked. The… rather high-pitched voice, Blaine noted.

"Yeah… I forgot you were a psychic…"

"Predestined events are not my specialty. Tarot cards can't even get that specific. You got my note, then," Kurt said, "I don't just give out my number to everyone."

"Yeah… my little case of possessed lawn ornaments is a special occasion," Blaine replied irritably.

"Well… there might be that little vision that happened yesterday. A little Gooseberry might have told me about it…" Kurt replied.

Blaine thought about this for a moment. Rachel  _Berry_ … the  _psychic rub-off_ , "Wait, what?"

" _Rachel_  told me about  _your little jumping bean incident_  when she gave you that necklace…" Kurt replied. "I suspect you are Awakening to some psychic power…"

Blaine paused, "I won't even argue with you. You're as insane as I am if you think I am turning into a psychic."

"Not  _turning into_. You might actually  _be_ … one of us."

"That's not why I called!" Blaine suddenly shouted. There was a silence on the other end. "Sorry. Just… Can the statues actually move? I thought they were… just possessed."

"Revengeful spirits are pretty strong. They can resort to moving particles of matter especially when threatened or angry. Which I'm sure they're both at the moment, thanks to you and your family," Kurt replied.

He didn't seem phased by Blaine's earlier shouting moment. Kurt's calm disposition was creeping Blaine out just a little bit. Then again, the dark-haired boy hadn't yet met a psychic… besides Rachel. Maybe psychics were either creepily calm or creepily helpful. Or both.

"Great. So this is all my fault."

"If you paid for the house yourself, then most likely. I doubt you did, as you live with both parents and a little sister," Kurt replied quite bluntly.

Blaine's eyebrow raised, "So… what do I have to do?"

"Get your family out for as long as possible. I've heard from the grapevine that your father is working all weekend and your mother and sister have a little girl-day tomorrow, so I'm sure that's easy," Kurt told him, then he added, "You'll have to stay behind and watch the angels. We'll be there for lunch, and then we'll get those spirits back into the Rift for you."

"All right… How much do you want me to pay you for this… job…?" Blaine asked.

"Just make us a healthy lunch. Sandwiches are fine. No meat for Rach… or dairy or anything that once had a face. And I'm only eating fish or poultry these days," Kurt replied, "Food is payment enough for our services."

Blaine noted this. Hopefully he wouldn't have to call the two nut jobs ever again after this, but it was good to know they were cheap and ready for a fight with ghoulies and ghosties and… wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey Rifties and stuff.

"Done deal," Blaine replied, "I guess I should thank you."

"Oh, don't thank us yet, Blaine Anderson," Kurt said, and Blaine could  _hear_  the cheeky grin behind it, "You're in for a real treat tomorrow. When you see what psychics can do, you won't just be thanking us for eradicating some revengeful spirits from stone angels…"

Kurt had disconnected, but Blaine was all ready feeling some weird psychic vibe coming from even the phone. He dropped it suddenly, making Luna mewl in surprise and jump off the pillow Blaine had once been drooling on (attractively). He thought back to the vision he had seen when Rachel had put the necklace around his neck. He felt his hand gravitate toward his neck, where the pendent still rested over his now thudding heart. Perhaps he was… psychic.

"No!" Blaine shouted, moving back to his spot by the back window and looking at Luna, who crooked her tiny head to gaze at her insane owner, "I'm not a psychic, Luna. I swear. Maybe the Nargles are screwing with my brain. That or Kurt  _freaking_  Hummel is…"

***

The next morning Blaine was alone at about ten in the morning. Thank goodness his mother and sister had gone shopping the afternoon before, and so Blaine was surrounded in the kitchen by vegetables and bread and anything else he would need to make  _two complete strangers_  lunch. He hoped that Rachel and Kurt, beyond the meat preferences (or lack there of), weren't too picky about what was going into the sandwiches.

His father hadn't come home, of course, as he was in Columbus or some other big city close by. His mother and sister had gone out to go explore the city. As they left, Blaine kept a sharp eye on the angels, who dared not move as the two ladies walked to Mrs. Anderson's car. Blaine had turned his body away from the angels as soon as he saw the car leave out of his peripherals and had begun making the sandwiches. If there were vegetables involved, he could put the sandwiches in the refrigerator until Kurt and Rachel arrived.

"Well… at least I'm setting myself to find a nice guy by being all home ec-y," he told Luna, who was having a bite to eat at her bowl. He blinked, "Wow… I cutesify things even  _out_  of my head…"

Luna sat down to listen to her master muse, crooking her head once more as she had done the evening before. "I blame  _Doctor Who_ ," was all Blaine had to say to her.

Come to think of it, this whole situation was reminding him eerily of an episode of  _Doctor Who_ … except it was more… paranormally than… timey-wimey. It was still wibbly-wobbly and there was a Doctor-like character involved (and a beautiful young girl as his 'companion'). "This is  _so_  much more surreal, though. Time and space have nothing to do with anything this time around," Blaine told Luna, finishing Kurt and Rachel's sandwiches and putting them in the fridge. He got to work on his own sandwich next, which would have more lunchmeat, he decided.

***

Kurt and Rachel got there at eleven, just as Blaine was coming in from the back door, having fed and threw a ball to the easily excitable puppy. They rang the doorbell, Rachel with her back to Kurt, staring down the Angels. "They look like they're going to kill something…"

"Damn straight they will," Kurt replied, just as Blaine opened the door.

The two stared at each other. Blaine noticed how androgynous the boy was, even though he was nearly as tall as Blaine, if not maybe an inch taller or shorter. He had the same green-blue-grey eyes that had flashed in his mind thanks to the silver trinket still around the curly-haired boy's neck.  _Was this necklace… his?_

Kurt, obviously, had seen this New Kid before, having noticed him around after his first day, sitting with the jocks. He wasn't surprised at Blaine quite like the other was surprised at him.

Their 'moment' was ended by Rachel's sharp jab to Kurt's back, right where his ribs were. "My freaking eyes are watering. Are you done having eye-sex?"

Kurt laughed and pulled Rachel by the hand right past Blaine, "He started it."

" _Oh_  thank  _god_!" Rachel said, and turned around, squeezing her eyes shut as tears poured down her cheeks from pollen in the springtime air, and sunlight, probably. "Wow… it's so much more homey than it was before…"

Blaine raised an eyebrow, "You've broken in, I take it?"

"Ever wonder why the attic window doesn't lock all the way?" Rachel asked, taking in the house, "Kurt is a  _wonder_  with a lighter and a pair of tweezers."

Blaine didn't want to know how that worked, so he simply led the two into the kitchen and took their sandwiches out of the refrigerator. "Bon appetite."

Rachel smiled, "This look  _delicious_ , Blaine. Thanks so much."

"You eat too. You'll be doing some heavy staring today," Kurt said, pointing to the third sandwich.

"Oh, I get to help?" Blaine asked, not sure if he should be scared shitless or filled with unfathomable pride.

"A little," was Kurt's curt answer.

"Hopefully by seeing our psychic abilities, we can see if you truly have them… or… something else happened when I gave you that necklace," Rachel added, taking a bite of her sandwich and groaning in happiness at the flavors. "Obviously, you've moved on to the Anger stage."

"Anger stage?" Blaine asked, eyebrows furrowing. Kurt readied himself to dive under the island counter they were eating at. "Am I grieving or something?"

"Or something," Kurt chirped, licking at something in the sandwich, figuring out what Blaine had done to enchant his tongue.

"Grieving the loss of being a mundane human being, yes," Rachel replied, elbowing her friend lightly in the ribs. She seemed to do that a lot. "I went through it all in eighth grade. And my precious Kurtie wasn't there to help me through it, either," she said sadly. "But I grew out of it, and hopefully… if you are indeed Awakening, then you'll have both of us."

"And you're obviously angrily  _denying_  the fact that you might be a psychic," Kurt added, "He's blurring the line a bit, Rachel. Can one  _do_  that?"

"Anything it possible," Rachel replied. "Mmm… Blaine, you're going to make the man of your dreams a very happy, healthy boy," she said, changing the subject as she tore into the second half of her sandwich. She could see the growing outburst of 'angry denial' sitting at the edge of Blaine's consciousness… and Kurt could  _hear_  it echoing through the house.

Blaine went back to eating, absentmindedly passing out napkins as he did. Rachel had practically inhaled her food, and Kurt was almost done himself. They were silent as they all slipped into their own thoughts about what might go down in the next few hours. Finally, as they all were finishing, Kurt took the plates and began washing them.

"My house… let me do them," Blaine whined, getting up.

"No, no. As thanks for such a stunning meal, let me," Kurt replied firmly.

Rachel raised an eyebrow at Blaine telling Blaine not to argue, a playful smile on her lips. "Let him. You're parents will wonder what happened to you to make you so OCD today. Just tell them Kurt happened."

***

Kurt certainly did happen.

After doing the dishes, he and Rachel went outside again, staring straight at the Angels as they did. Blaine followed them without a word, trying not to blink. The Angels seemed quite angry at this, for the look on their faces wasn't very pleasant. The spirits within must have had strong facial features, for the stone angel's lips were twisted in horrifying shapes, some with mouths open like they were screaming, and others simply grimaced at them. Eyes wide open, they stared intently at the three.

Kurt peeled his eyes away, knowing that both Rachel and Blaine were staring at them, and took something out of the backpack he had been carrying around with him. It was a thing of rope. Next out of the backpack wasn't a sonic screwdriver, but some white pillowcases.

"Rachel, turn from them and wet your eyes," Kurt said. "Blaine… you're a forward for the soccer team, right?"

"Yeah…?" Blaine replied.

"How quick can you put pillowcases with holes in them to get them over their heads on spirits who can take you into the Rift in about a millisecond?"

"On a good day? If someone watches them… then I could have all eight of them covered in two or three minutes," Blaine replied.

"Take these, and Rachel and I will keep our eyes on them for as long as possible. If you can't get them all before we absolutely have to blink… well… I'll have my work cut out for me," Kurt told him sharply.

Blaine nodded as Rachel turned around and Kurt looked up at the Angels again. Blaine blinked hard, took the pillowcases from Kurt, and sprinted down the walk, throwing the pillowcases over the Angels heads, watching as they went from stony angels with appalling faces to looking like those ghosts children wind up going as on Halloween (except with holes cut out so their creepy faces still showed). Kurt and Rachel followed Blaine, tying the ropes around the angels quickly without taking their eyes off them: Rachel taking one side of the walk, and Kurt taking the other.

When they were all tied up, the three were at the end of the walk, their backs to the angels. "God bless the fact these guys don't have any object permanence," Rachel breathed. "Can you pin them all down at once, Kurt, or is that too much?"

Blaine raised an eyebrow, "What?"

"Kurt's psychic gifts are of illusion and general telepathy. He can pin down the minds of any living or dead creature within a mile. Usually he can do up to… four creatures at once?" Rachel asked of her friend.

"Nobody's perfect. Someone's going to have to watch the other four while I pin them. Rachel, get a song in you…"

"And what does Rachel do? She obviously has a different gift…" Blaine commented.

"She's my pied piper of the Rift. She can ensnare anyone she wishes to do her bidding. She mostly does it on the spirits as she leads them back into the Rift, where the inner guardians take over," Kurt replied. "You'd have something different. I'm thinking psychometry. The ability to wear or touch something of someone's and see the emotions and sometimes memories of the former wearer…"

Blaine was about to reiterate that he was  _not_  psychic, when Kurt suddenly turned and Blaine saw he was now staring at the stone Angels,  _who had moved in maybe two centimeters closer._  Rachel saw this and hissed, "Oh now they're so mad they'll move even when your back is turned. Don't blink, Blaine. Whatever you do,  _don't. Blink_." Then to Kurt she said, "Good luck."

To which he nodded and closed his eyes. Blaine wanted to watch what was going on, but the Angel closest to him had its mouth open, and there were some razor sharp teeth on that one. The one next to this one had its arms stretched out to Kurt, who these creatures obviously knew from the past.

Kurt, meanwhile, had tapped in to the spiritual identity inside the four he was focusing on. Rachel was doing her best to stare down all four, as Kurt's eyes were closed. As she did this, she grabbed for something else out of the backpack: a thermos. She opened it and poured the liquid into the cap. It was just water. Not holy water… just normal, wet, water from the tap.

Kurt often made a show of his talents. A simple exorcism, even from stone, didn't need holy water or strange chanting. One just needed a talented psychic or two and a combination of abilities. That's why Kurt was born with two abilities, as his mother had before him and her father before her. Because Rachel had Awakened only a year or two before, she only had one ability. Those who Awaken always had only one. But Kurt made a show as he opened his eyes, the four spirits completely under his control. He took the water and threw it on the four in the five major parts of the anatomy: first the head, then the heart, then the stomach (above the belly button) and each side of the clavicle.

Then he looked to Rachel and nodded. She saw him out of her peripheral and nodded back. Then she opened her mouth, and using no words, began to sing.

She had a lovely voice, and the spirits suddenly came out of their stone shells and swayed under the music. If Rachel had taken a step, they would have as well, to follow the brunette wherever she decided to take them. The stone angels they had come from, however, returned to the original form they had been in before they had been possessed: the simply, quaint angels Mrs. Anderson had seen when they had first been looking for a house down in Lima.

Kurt turned from the spirits, and did the same thing on the other side, and this time Blaine got to watch, even if he had to stare at the angels a little longer as Kurt tapped into the spirit's minds with closed eyes. As soon as the spirits were freed, Rachel began to move toward the school, humming as she walked. And the spirits followed. Kurt elbowed Blaine, as he was still staring at the restored stone ornaments.

"They're normal now. Rachel will get them back into the Rift, the inner guardians will deal with them, and you won't have to worry about getting snatched."

Blaine glanced at him, "That was… wow."

"Wish you could do something like that?" Kurt asked, another cheeky grin on his face.

"Kind of… yeah. That was like… really cool," Blaine said, looking at the younger looking boy. "You do that every day?"

"Just about. Something goes wrong and spirits get out and cause trouble and… that's what Rachel and I are here for," Kurt replied, shrugging like it was no big deal. "I made a promise to Principal Figgins that that Rift wouldn't harm the people who could see it anymore… and I intend to keep it until I can find another psychic to take my place when my senior year rolls around."

There was silence as Blaine glanced at the angels again, "Well… Mallory will be pleased to note that the lawn ornaments aren't creepy anymore…"

Kurt looked around them and raised an eyebrow, "Well…"

Blaine glanced around at them and then grimaced, "Yeah. They're still creepy."

"Yeah," Kurt sort of hissed. He began untying and un-pillowcasing the statues and stuffing them back in the backpack. "Well… when Rach gets back, we'll be taking our leave."

Blaine nodded and leaned against one of the now non-possessed angels, "All right. Thanks so much. They were starting to creep me out for about a day there."

"They do that," Kurt replied, looking at the dark-haired boy, "And if you need anything, call me. You can call Rachel too, if I make you  _that_  nervous."

Blaine stared at him, wide-eyed, and he was about to protest when he remembered, "No fair! You can read my mind!"

"Only when it wanders," Kurt replied cryptically, a smaller smile replacing his cheeky grin.

They moved to the porch steps, waiting for Rachel to return. They were suddenly silent, lost in their own thoughts. Blaine wondered for a minute if Kurt was reading his, but decided since he was consciously aware of his thoughts, the other wouldn't even try.

Soon Rachel appeared at the end of the street, skipping happily back with a large grin on her face. Kurt stood up to meet her, and he took her hands, "Another job well done, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry?"

"Oh yes, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel," Rachel replied. She looked down, "Thanks so much, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson."

Blaine looked up at the inside joke, but decided, as he didn't want to alienate himself when Rachel was trying so hard to pull him into her inner circle, to keep quiet about asking about it. He stood up and said, "No, thank  _you_. Now I can live in peace again."

Rachel laughed and took something out of the skirt she was wearing— _Grandma Anderson would kill for that flower print_ —and handed it to the dark-haired boy. "This is my number. Now you have a choice of who to call. Whether you want a hardened psychic—" here she glanced at Kurt for a split second before turning back to Blaine "—or a squishier one."

_She makes cutesifies things too. Oh god… I'm becoming an effeminate gay!_

"Thanks you guys," Blaine said, then, without really thinking about it, "Would you guys come to my first game next Friday?"

Kurt and Rachel looked at each other, then smiled, "Of course," they said simultaneously.

"We'll try not to look up the outcome in the tarot cards," Kurt said, trying his hand at a joke.

Blaine cracked a smile (finally) at the other male, "Thank you. If you do, though, please don't tell me. Just… keep it to yourselves, okay?"

"Okay," Kurt replied, pleased he had gotten a smile out of the other boy. He linked arms with Rachel and they turned to go down to the pathway and out of Blaine's life for a couple days.

Rachel paused before they reached the end of the path, though, and turned her head to the side that didn't have Kurt  _right there_. "Do call if anything out of the ordinary happens. Either one of us. Anytime."

Blaine nodded, and Rachel turned her head forward again, allowing the two to walk once more. When they were out of sight, Blaine felt something rub against his leg and looked down at Luna. "I almost wish she was talking about Crumple Horned Snorkacks or Blubbering Humdingers instead of my so-called Awakening psychic abilities."

But Luna simply mewed and tried to climb up his leg to be picked up, to which he did and, taking one last look at the angels, went inside and closed the door.


	3. Psychometric

Being a psychic did not have any classes in high school. There was no Psychic 101. There were only other psychics, and maybe the spirits living in the Rift above Blaine's head. But being a psychic had been on Blaine's mind since last Saturday. Ever since Kurt Hummel had barreled into his life, eradicated some nasty spirits living in some stone angels lining his walk, and then had walked away, only hinting toward some crazy stuff that might be happening to the other male, Blaine had been thinking almost nonstop about being one.

 _Psychometry?_  Blaine thought as he sat down at his usual table with the jocks and cheerleaders.

"Hey, Soccer Stud," Quinn said, sitting down next to him. They had become pretty buddy-buddy over the week. "Coach Sylvester is having us cheer at your soccer game tomorrow."

Blaine groaned, "Great. Not only am I forced to wear a jersey that reminds me of Manchester United's, I have to watch the other team drool over you guys?" he asked.

"They didn't have cheerleaders for Quidditch."

"No… but Gryffindor had Luna Lovegood that one time," Quinn replied. One of the many reasons Quinn and Blaine were so cohesive as friends?  _Harry Potter_  and English soccer ( _football_ , as Blaine was so anally correcting his other jock friends).

"Man! I'm so psyched Beiste is letting us watch your game tomorrow!" Puck said, putting his arm around Blaine and giving him a fairly light noogie.

"Hey! Hey! Watch the poof! I take pride in the fact that I can sometimes copy the Tenth Doctor's hair!" Blaine "McDorkypants" Anderson said, trying to shove the bigger male off of him. He was laughing, though, which made Quinn and the other Cheerios laugh along with him.

"The whole entire baseball team is coming to see you, and the Cheerios are going to be cheering you along. Do you feel like royalty, Mr. Anderson?" Santana asked, a sly smile on her beautifully tanned face.

"I don't think the King gets noogied by his knights, but yeah," Blaine replied, finally getting out of Puck's strong grip.

"I heard you got Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry to come as well," Finn piped up from his spot in between Karofsky and Puck. Karofsky and Quinn both turned their heads at Finn, who shrugged, "What? I overhear these things when they talk to  _only each other_  in class and think no one else is listening."

Quinn looked back at Blaine, who had been observing her (and Karofsky, but that was for a different matter) and gave him a disparaging look. He simply shrugged and stole one of her fries, to which she pushed the plate toward him and he made a triumphant arm movement, like he was pulling something down toward his hip.

Quinn suddenly grabbed the boy's arm and pulled him out of the cafeteria. Blaine yelped when he felt his body being pulled up by such a…  _damn,_ for a skinny girl Quinn was really strong!

"What was that for? You  _gave_  me your fries, Princess!" Blaine cried when they were out in the empty hallway.

"I need to tell you this. You've become my best friend here, practically. We're like Kurt and Rachel in that respect. So… can I tell you some things I've kept to myself since freshman year?" she asked.

Blaine warmed at the thought that they could be the next Hummel-Berry duo. Fabray-Anderson sounded a bit better than Anderson-Fabray, come to think of it. They would be more normal than the aforementioned psychics, though… Quinn and Blaine weren't psychics, for one. (Yes, Blaine was still denying it.)

"At the end of last year, I went through some pretty depressing things. Not only did my parents kick me out of the house for being bisexual, but… when a particular spiritual-ish storm happened and the power went out… I… I freaked out and started to… to  _glow_."

Scratch Quinn and Blaine being a normal duo.

"You glowed?"

"Yeah… like that kid from  _Sky High_?" Quinn asked.

Blaine raised his eyebrows and nodded. "And the other thing?"

"Well… before all that happened… some spirits were attacking and possessing the cheer squad. Everyone was possessed before me, but as my  _possessed friends_  were about to… to steal my body, Kurt and Rachel came to save the day, as usual. Well… their abilities never left my mind after the battle… and… and… God…" Quinn bit her lower lip and looked in to the cafeteria, staring at a certain brunette psychic, flipping her hair and laughing at something the other psychic had said.

Blaine followed her eyes. "So… you're Awakening… and you have a crush on Rachel?" he asked.

"Shh! I call her the Gooseberry. Kurt is sometimes referred to as the Canary… because his motif of kind of… yellow and birdlike."

Blaine's hand flashed up to the silver necklace hanging from his neck. Quinn always wore silver studs in her first earring holes (she had gotten away with two holes on each ear).

Quinn laughed, "Kind of like that pendent, yeah. Was that… for damage control with the WMHS poltergeist?"

Blaine nodded, "Yeah… I usually hide it under my shirt."

They were silent for a minute, simply smiling at each other before Blaine said, "I… I might be Awakening too."

"Awakening?" Quinn asked, "You've used that word before. What… what does it mean?"

"It's a term Kurt and Rachel have been using when talking to me about… it. It means… like… finding out you're psychic ability. Some people are born with it, some people… Awaken," Blaine told her, "When… when Rachel put this necklace around my neck… I saw the vision of a woman that looked a lot like Kurt…"

Quinn reached out her hand, delicately grasped the silver pendent (with little yellow jewels as it's eyes and lining the tips of it's feathers) and studied it. "Kurt hands out a lot of his mom's silver jewelry to new kids to protect them against Suzy. He's got a full schedule this year, with no free time to help Rachel with damage control, so he gave some of his silver things to Rachel. If you… if you saw a vision from Kurt's memory, then this might have had some real attachment to him…"

Quinn pulled her hand away and played with one of her earrings for a time. Blaine fiddled with the canary before he was struck by curiosity for the other's… ability.

"And you? Do you only glow when you're scared?" Blaine asked.

"I don't know. It hasn't happened for a while. I mean, my friend Mercedes has me living with her, and so I don't feel so alone anymore. My life is, for the most part, returning to normal, so… I guess I don't really need to use my gift… I don't think I even have it anymore, come to think of it."

 _A gift_.

"Oh, but please don't tell anyone about any of this. I want… I want to be as normal as possible," Quinn suddenly said. "A crush on a psychic and being one yourself? The Rift is abnormal enough."

"I know how you feel. I won't tell about you if you don't tell about me," Blaine said. "I don't even know if it was even  _my own_  psychic ability."

Quinn put out her hand and Blaine shook it, "Unbreakable Vow?"

"Uhm… I don't think its  _that_  serious of an issue…" Blaine replied, giving Quinn a weird look.

***

Blaine returned home after practice and flopped on his bed. He had a study hall at the end of the day, in which he had breezed through all his homework (the private to public school transition hadn't muddled with his study habits, thank goodness), so he was pretty much free for the rest of the afternoon.

After a few moments of lying on his face, he was reminded he needed to breathe, so he turned his head to one side and nearly had a heart-attack when he saw that there was small ball of black fur in his face suddenly.

"Hello to you too, Looney," Blaine muttered, pushing himself onto his hands.

He looked around the room, and decided to look through his closet for the next day's outfit. He had figured out early on that it was a time-saver in the morning to just lay out his outfit the night before instead of waking up early to slave over it. Blaine actually took pride in the fact that he could dress well. He wasn't on the level with Kurt Hummel, of course, but he could certainly hold his own.

He got up and opened the closet door, peering in to his neatly hung button-down shirts, wondering if he should wear one the next day, or just advertise with his jersey. (When given it that day, he had put it on and had another vision, which had freaked him out, but not too much, as it was just a vision of winning a soccer game. Which could have meant Blaine was just visualizing what it would be like to totally dominate the other team the next day.) He was just about to close the closet and see if there was something in his drawers when something flashed in the corner of his eye.  _Shiny?_

He moved the bit of cloth that was covering the twinkling object and pulled it out. It was a fob-watch. It was a genuine, English fob-watch, with the initials  _C.H_  engraved on the lid. Blaine put it in his palm for a moment as he shut the door and made his way to his desk. He looked out the window at the angels lining his walk before sitting down at the desk he had placed there, throwing the watch in the air a couple times as he studied it. It was fascinating. And then something… made him want to open it.

So he did… and suddenly his bedroom disappeared.

Blaine began to cry, just as the boy in front of him was doing.

They were in a train station, and the boy was hanging on to an older man, who was wearing a trench-coat and a nice, khaki, wide-brimmed hat. "Papa! Papa no! Don't leave me!" the boy was crying.

"I have to fight for my country, Jeremy," the man said.

Another woman smiled at them. She had a little girl and another little boy holding her hands.

"Your Aunt Vanessa will take good care of you, Jeremy," the man said, "And I'll be back when we defeat the Germans. We did before, but I'm not going to stand back again like a coward!"

"Papa, please! You're the only one left of my immediate family!" the boy cried. He was about fourteen, maybe fifteen.

The older male leaned down to be face to face with his son and looked him in the eyes, taking something out of his pocket. It was the fob-watch Blaine was now holding. "Take this, son. When you open the clock-face, think of me. I'll be back when the Nazis are all gone…"

The older man straightened himself and gently pushed Jeremy to his aunt and cousins. Before he totally disappeared…

And the rest of them did to. Blaine was back in his room, staring out into space with an open fob-watch. He blinked back into reality looked down at the clock-face. The hands weren't moving, and it was perpetually stuck at 4:32. Blaine shook his head and closed the clock, tossing it on the desk next to  _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ , which he was reading for the seventh time.

He looked at Luna, who had moved from his bed to next to him. She looked up at him with her gorgeous green eyes, her head crooked to the side.

Blaine picked up his phone and dialed a number. "Rachel… I think I've Awakened."

***

It was only an hour later, and Rachel was rubbing Blaine's back as he lay on the grass in the backyard. Dodger was observing the two, but he was lazy and tired, having just gotten home from a walk.

"It's definitely psychometry," Rachel had told him. "You saw a memory of the recent owner of the watch, this boy… Jeremy..."

Now Blaine was face first in the grass, getting over himself. After a few minutes of inhaling the grass and his nose feeling scratchy, he pushed himself up and sat with his knees up close under his chin. "So I'm like you two?"  _And Quinn… maybe._

Rachel nodded, giving the boy a small smile. "Welcome to the ranks. You do know I'll have to tell Kurt one of these days… right?"

"Go ahead," Blaine replied. "But I'd like to stay as normal as possible. No making me run around catching ghosts and whatever else you do…"

Rachel bit her lower lip. "I can't make any promises…" she said finally. "Kurt has been hoping that more psychics would want to show themselves now that it's such a big deal. We need more people with different abilities…"

Blaine shook his head, "As much as I want to be part of something as cool as what you too are doing… I just transferred, and I'm making my way through the transition as smoothly as possible…"

"I know, I know," Rachel replied. " _I'll_  respect your wishes, but I'm not sure if  _Kurt_  will."

They were silent for a moment until Rachel said, "So you're a soccer player, huh?"

Blaine was reminded of his game the next day, "Yeah."

"It's nice to know a jock. I mean… when I was in middle school I was best friends with Quinn Fabray—she was a gymnast and a really good dancer… but then some really weird things happened between her and me…" Rachel said, her voice getting quiet.

Blaine glanced at her, now intrigued after Quinn's confession(s).

"I don't know what happened… she only told me she was living at Mercedes' house, and she didn't talk to me soon after even that. Then… she joined the cheer-squad her freshman year, and left me to flounder and find my own way. It was only the second month of freshman year that Kurt and I even reunited."

Blaine leaned back onto his hands as he looked up at the giant oak near the fence. They had spread themselves out on a blanket that Rachel had pulled out of her backpack when Blaine suggested they talk outside in the warm sunshine. "Quinn and I are friends even now. I'm sure she regrets pushing you away… but people often do when they change schools, especially middle school to high school…"

Rachel smiled at Blaine, "I saw you two leave the cafeteria together today. It was odd, because I know you're gay, and she's… well she's certainly not straight. I saw her and a girl named Jasmine holding hands for a few weeks our freshman year…" she said almost sheepishly.

"Yeah. Nothing happened. We're kind of like you and Kurt only… well… only half the duo is psychic," Blaine said, not daring to blow Quinn's secret, even if it was the Gooseberry. "Hey… what can you tell me about people glowing?"

Rachel blinked, "Why?"

"I saw it on a TV show. I've been watching cable the past few days due to lack of homework to do after school," Blaine lied, "Some… some girl went into an old castle, freaked out, and started glowing. It was a psychic show so I… began to wonder."

"Sometimes, in times of darkness, a psychic power like glowing is really helpful. I've heard cases where psychic glowing happens in dark places filled with spirits to help them find their way home. Home meaning the Spirit World, of course," Rachel said. "Psychic glowing is the flame to the spirits' moth, in a sense. Kind of like my singing can attract spirits to follow the sound like the pied piper or a siren?"

Blaine smiled, "And what's psychometry good for? Besides cheating on history tests?"

"Gaining secret knowledge about spirits and even living people?" Rachel suggested, a grin on her face. "You can learn a lot about a person from their emotions and memories. Sometimes… I wish I could do that with Kurt. Go to that time when he stopped caring about himself… There was a time when he actually was looking for… that special someone… Then something happened it all stopped."

Blaine was suddenly intrigued, "What do you mean?"

"Kurt and I grew up on the same street. We were childhood friends, even getting 'married' to one another as children do," Rachel chuckled at the memory, then her smile faded and she was back in the past, "We grew apart after an incident when we were eight years old, when his mother died. I thought he would just be very sad for a time, but then he grew distant from everyone throughout middle school. I made my own friends, then lost them, then Awakened, and then found Kurt again. We've been together ever since… but even with me he cares too much for others: constantly checking my temperature, going back for me when there's a particularly nasty spirit that can only be led by me and so I have to go into the Rift to secure them… that kind of thing. He goes out of his way to help people who don't even  _like_  him. He once saved  _Dave Karofsky_ when he wandered down a wrong hall and got stuck in a time-locked part of the Rift last semester."

Blaine was watching the girl, his eyebrow raised, "And… he just doesn't care what happens to him when he's saving people?"

"I think he's got some weird Hero Complex or something," Rachel said, "Because he still jokes about his complexion and his clothes and all that… but… he's always taking one for the team," Rachel replied, "I worry about him…"

Blaine put his arms around the girl and pulled her close, stroking her hair fondly. "I can help you, but we'd have to keep it secret from Kurt and everyone else at school…"

Rachel pushed away after a moment, "No… it's fine. I try not to meddle with Kurt. He gets… snippy… when I pry into his private affairs."

Blaine dropped his hands, feeling a little useless. "See… if I were part of your band of merry men, I wouldn't know what to do. I don't know you guys so well, my ability seems a little useless, and the only thing I think I can contribute to your operation is speedy pillowcase-throwing and a good meal."

Rachel laughed, but took the boy's hand, "Watch. When you let your gift mature, you can start doing other things with them besides just seeing and feeling things when you wear other people's clothes. I've read about cases where you wear something and the dearly departed can speak through you. A type of possession that you can turn on and off. Stay away from second-hand clothes, though."

"I always do," Blaine replied, squeezing the girl's hand.

***

Friday was a blur for Blaine. He got through all his classes unscathed, and was in the locker rooms, and dressed in his uniform in twenty minutes flat. His coach said some things to the boys, including the ending gem: "Boys, we do it kind of like the English. We go out with the cheer squad instead of kids, but you get the point. Forwards first, then mid-field, then defense, then goalkeeper. The rest of you bench-warmers will go out with each other, rather than a pretty lady."

Oh, the gay jokes Blaine could have made then.

In the hall his coach and one Sue Sylvester lined them up according to the roster. Of course Blaine and Quinn were paired off. They gave each other a playful sneer as they linked hands and giggled much like the two total girls they were.

When it was time to walk out, Blaine looked for the people who mattered: Rachel and Kurt were sitting near the middle, a couple seats behind the baseball team (Puck gave him a curt nod, Finn waved, and Karofsky seemed to glare daggers at him, for some odd reason. The other baseball players were cheering and cat-calling at the curly-haired male). But Kurt seemed a little distracted, trying to show Rachel his phone screen. She elbowed him a couple times, smiling and waving at Blaine when she couldn't handle Kurt's squirelly-ness anymore. Kurt immediately snapped to attention when she did this, almost glaring at Blaine just as Karofsky was doing.

"Hummel and Berry delivered," Quinn said to him as they waved to the crowd and then parted from each other: Quinn to one side of the field and Blaine to the middle of the field. He wasn't captain—the goalkeeper, Freddy, was—so he didn't have to shake hands with the other team's captain or even flip the coin for first kick.

But all too soon the game was starting, and Blaine had to focus on running and kicking and passing instead of wondering why Kurt seemed so angry at him all-of-the-sudden.

***

"Rachel, Sandy has been calling me nonstop! It's either we go now or I block his number forever," Kurt hissed when it was halfway into the first half. Blaine was playing well, having gotten three hat-tricks and one goal. The score right now was 1-0, and the other team was looking terrible.

"Then block his number forever. We'll leave at half-time and check it out, okay?" Rachel replied. She had not yet told Kurt about Blaine's ability, but she was itching to tell Kurt about it so Kurt would shut up and watch the game all ready. She wanted Kurt to stop worrying about little things like  _the drama department's little acting problem._

"Rach, high-schoolers are not just naturally gifted in acting! I mean, Lara Erikson  _sounded_  and  _acted_  like a 60-year-old man with laryngitis— _and she is fit as a fiddle at 16-years old_!" Kurt said, squeezing Rachel's hand.

She squeezed back and tore her eyes from the game for a minute, grabbed Kurt's face, and moved it so that he was looking at Blaine. Blaine was running down the field with the ball. Soon he passed it to another boy, who bounced it off his knee to his foot, dribbled it down the field, and passed it back to Blaine, who kicked it in the corner of the net, bringing the score to 2-0 in the first half. There was still 4 minutes left.

"He's fully Awakened," she said, as she stood up with the rest of the McKinley High fans.

"What?" Kurt asked, raising his voice.

"He's fully Awakened!" Rachel repeated.

As they sat down, she looked at his face. His eyebrows were raised, his pupils dilated, and a small blush came across his face. "He…"

"Awakened, yes. And he told me, rather than going to you," she pointed out, her eyes gravitating to the game again.

Kurt was eerily silent beside her, now lost in thought and somewhat… jealous? An Awakened psychic should always go to a psychic that was born that way. It was just common knowledge to go to a seasoned psychic to be mentored!

***

The first half of the game ended, and Rachel dragged Kurt off to the theater, where the spring musical was getting ready for its tech week. Sandy Ryerson, a flamboyant man, gave an exasperated sigh as the two approached and said, "Well, this is the longest I've had to wait for you two!"

"Sorry… we were…" Kurt shook his head, "There was something we had to do for a friend."

Sandy gave a weird gesture that looked like he was shuddering and telling the two to back off at the same time. Rachel and Kurt ignored the strange flamboyance and went into the theater, looking over the people on the stage. "I wanted them to try on outfits and, so far, Lara has been acting like an old man, Jessica has been acting like a five-year-old, and Patrick has been singing like the Princes from  _Into The Woods_. Honey, this is  _My Favorite Year_!" Sandy screamed this last part at a man dressed in a white blouse.

Lara was wearing a black tie, for some odd reason (did any girls wear ties in  _My Favorite Year_?), and Jessica was wearing a tutu, of course. Kurt shook his head and put his bag down, running down the aisles of the auditorium and snapping the costume clothes off of the three. "Possessed clothing," he said, turning to Sandy as he and Rachel walked close to the stage. "Get rid of them."

"But… we need those items. We don't have a big budget to get all new clothes, and these were gifts from a big donor to the WMHS Dramatics," Jessica huffed, now only in her leotard and feeling the draft from the big fans in the ceiling.

Rachel blinked and grinned like the Cheshire Cat, "I think we can get a consultant, this time, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel…"

Kurt glanced at her, crooking his head to the side, "Yes… we do need to get Blaine into our little group, don't we?"

Rachel's eyebrows furrowed, "No. We'd just have him as our consultant!"

Kurt looked at her. In fact, everyone in the room looked at her.

She crossed her arms over her chest, "He told me he didn't want anything to do with our job, Kurt," she said, glaring at her best friend.

Kurt's eyes got wider, if that was even possible, "But… he's a  _psychic_."

"Yeah, but he's  _new_ , so don't alienate him!" Rachel shot back.

Not wanting to get into an argument with an audience present, Kurt turned to Sandy and said, "We'll get this sorted out. In the meantime, stay away from the boxes you got these items from. We'll have something figured out before your first dress rehearsal."

"Thank god," Sandy said, throwing his hands (flamboyantly) in the air, "You heard what the man said. Take those backstage and let's go from the top. I don't have all day, people!"

Rachel and Kurt snuck out of the auditorium in this mini-rant, dashing down the halls. Kurt was about to go left, towards the doorway home, when Rachel grabbed his hand and made them both go right, back to the soccer fields. "You're not getting away from this game that easy. It's better to propose consultance face-to-face anyway…"

Kurt pulled back and dug in his heels, "But you said he wants nothing to do with us."

Rachel nearly snapped her neck with how fast she turned her head to look at him. "He wants nothing to do with  _what we do_ , Kurt Hummel," she said, and Kurt nearly broke free of her grasp to run for the hills because of the pissed look she gave him. "He wants to be normal. He wants to be a forward on the soccer team. He wants to be friends with Quinn and the other jocks. He doesn't want to lose any of that by hanging out with us nonstop because  _people call us 24/7_ …"

Kurt loosened his foothold on the floor, and Rachel tugged his arm and made them go again. They didn't run this time, but rather moseyed back to the field, where the second half was almost over, and the score was 2-1. They stayed on the sidelines, near the entrance to the school, Rachel watching the cheerleaders for a time, and Kurt absentmindedly focusing his attention on Blaine, a pining look on his face.

***

 

"You guys disappeared," Blaine said; the tiring time of being slapped on the back came to end and he was finally alone (almost) with Rachel and Kurt. He was sweaty and panting, but it had been a good game, ending at a score of 2-1.

"We had… Something come up," Rachel replied. "Listen. I know you asked us not to make you join our little brigade… but will you at least help us? Just once?"

Blaine glanced first at Rachel, then at Kurt. "Uhm… depends on what sort of help you need…"

"Something that involves your talents," Rachel replied. "We don't need you to pillowcase anything, nor do we need you to make us lunch… though that might be nice."

Blaine rubbed the back of his neck and said, "Fine. Just this once. What do you need?"

"The costumes in the drama department are possessing the wearers," Kurt said, a slightly pissed-off aura emanating from him.

"Oooh… sounds like fun. How many of them, or is it everything?" Blaine asked, making a gesture for them to walk with him into the school. His mother and sister had gone on ahead of him so that he could talk with his friends before he left.

"That's why we need a full day to go through them. That's where you come in. If we go through the box of costumes and figure out which ones are possessed, then Kurt can solidify their essence and I can get them into the Rift," Rachel replied.

"Tomorrow. We do it tomorrow and we can get everything done with," Kurt replied, his diva face on and his sarcastic tone dominating.

Blaine nodded, "I'll bring lunch. You want something other than sandwiches? My mom makes this killer vegetarian pizza… I can learn how to make it and we can have cold pizza…" he said, ignoring Kurt's pissy mode.

"Sounds awesome, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson," Rachel replied, kissing his cheek after Blaine had found his mom and sister in the crowd leaving the school and waved to them. "We'll see you tomorrow. Don't worry about getting in. Figgins gave us the keys to all the doors when we accepted this job."

Blaine smiled, "Oh, 'cause I was wondering if Kurt was going to use his lighter-and-tweezers technique like he did to my bedroom window…"

"The attic bedroom is yours?" Rachel asked, eyebrows shooting up. Kurt was wandering around, trying to escape, but Rachel whipped out her hand and grabbed the back pocket of the boy's pants, pulling him close so she could snake her arm around his waist next.

"Yeah… Mallory gets her own room, and since I like old things, I get the attic," Blaine replied. "Well… see you tomorrow!"

"Later!" Rachel called and pulled her captive in another direction.

***

Blaine was back at the school in the early morning, earlier than Kurt and Rachel, who got there at 11:30 to Blaine's 10:45. Blaine shook his head and sighed, "Any longer, and I would have ditched you! Quinn and I have a movie date at five!"

Kurt rolled his eyes, "How normal of you."

"Cool it, you two," Rachel warned.

Blaine blinked, "What's wrong with Kurt? Do you suddenly hate me for my gift or something?"

Kurt glanced at Blaine, "You said it was a gift."

"So?" Blaine asked, shrugging. "It is. I can save a lot of time just touching objects in museums instead of reading the descriptions…" Blaine replied, shrugging.

"I don't think that's even allowed," Kurt told him, back to being growly.

"Whatever. I'm over being slightly different from people. It's not like they can see  _spirits_  or anything," Blaine replied, the level of sarcasm in his voice rising.

"I said cool it!" Rachel shouted, unlocking the door to the auditorium.

Soon the three were situated on yet another blanket, eating a fabulous vegetarian (more like vegan, Blaine noted) pizza in near silence.

"You didn't come to him," Rachel finally whispered as Kurt went to go get the boxes of potentially possessed costume pieces.

Blaine gave her a funny look and she almost choked on an olive. "What do you mean I 'didn't come to him?'" Blaine asked, breaking out the ever-popular air quotes.

"He wanted to be the one you finally told about your ability. He's hurt because you didn't trust him enough…"

"How could I? I thought he would just want me to join you guys. I knew you had a bit more compassion for psychic or normal person alike. Its like… because I'm a psychic I'm not worth saving anymore."

"That not true," Kurt said, a box in his hands. He dropped it without much pomp or circumstance and went back for the other one.

Rachel sighed and went after him, leaving Blaine to brood. Kurt was acting so childish about the whole thing, pouting and being visibly mad at him like a small child. (He couldn't help but think it slightly adorable, it should be noted.)

The psychic duo came back a short while later, and Blaine began sorting through the clothes, putting on hats and things and putting them in two piles: possessed or not possessed. Kurt and Rachel waited patiently as Blaine went in and out of memories, got emotional, and had to pause and get over himself between one piece of costuming and another. Blaine was also getting visibly tired, and as soon as both boxes were done, Rachel made Blaine a little nest and told him to listen to her song as she led the spirits back into the Rift after Kurt telepathically bound them.

He did, and thought he recognized 'Baby Mine' from  _Dumbo_. Since the Rift was right above them ( _how did that work out during performances?_ ), Rachel didn't have to lead the spirits anywhere, and Blaine was content to just listen as he drifted in and out of a psychic power-induced sleep.

***

When he woke up, he noticed that he was in a strange dog pile: Rachel with half of her back up against him and Kurt on her other side, his perfectly manicured hand in Blaine's face smelling of aloe and vanilla. Shrugging the initial awkward feeling off, he checked his watch. Only 4:09. He smiled, sent a quick text to Quinn about being a little late, set an alarm for 4:45, lay his head down on Rachel's exposed stomach, and closed his eyes again, still perfectly exhausted.


	4. The World of the Unknown

Blaine was wondering how a normal day would go for Kurt and Rachel. He had English with Kurt (the other sat in the middle next a particularly homeless-smelling male, while Blaine was front and center, next to Quinn, who also shared that class), and he shared Math and History with Rachel. He was pleased that Quinn was in his Spanish class, his English class, and had History with him and Rachel. Though they never actually spoke, all three of them, in History, Rachel and Blaine shared knowing looks every once and while.

But in several classes, Kurt or Rachel would get calls in the middle of the class, and be excused no matter what the excuse. Usually they were truthful: "Schuester can't get out of his office due to a black blob thing." "Spirits are possessing gingerbread men. It's that fairytale all over again." And Blaine and Quinn's personal favorite, during History, "It's seems there's a ghost trying to play Romeo to Tina's Juliet. I have to go investigate."

He was thinking about what Ghost-Busting was like as he was wandering the halls during his last period free block. He would have just gone home, but he had soccer practice, and then he and Quinn were getting together to watch  _A Very Potter Musical_  (and  _A Very Potter Sequel_ ) since Quinn hadn't yet seen it. He had very little homework, and Quinn had a morning free period, so she'd just do her homework then.

Blaine was so lost in thought that when he bumped into a pretty large, wide  _thing_  he was caught completely be surprise. When he looked up, he saw that it was Karofsky, who was as surprised that Blaine bumped into him as Blaine was. "Sorry buddy," Blaine said, stepping back.

"No problem," Karofsky replied gruffly, about the contact. He seemed to be there for a reason. "But I do have a problem with you becoming all buddy-buddy with Kurt Hummel…"

So that's what Karofsky was doing out of his cage. He and Blaine shared the same free block, but Karofsky wasn't allowed out of his study hall unless he had done something good, like pass a test or help an old lady across the street. It had been all over the locker rooms that Dave Karofsky had passed a particularly brutal history test that day. (Blaine had as well, but that was a given.)

"What?" Blaine asked, crooking his head to the side and furrowing his eyebrows.

Kurt wasn't even around. It was  _his_  History class during that time. So why was Dave talking to him about the kid?

"You know what I mean. You two have gotten closer since about two weeks ago!" Dave said, not quite raising his voice, but raising the intensity of it.

Blaine balked for a minute before he shook his head, "I thought we were friends, man," he said. "You could have told me you had a crush on Hummel, and I would have backed down."

It was Karofsky's turned to balk, but before he verbally retaliated, he shoved Blaine back into some lockers. "Fuck  _off_  man. I don't have a crush on Kurt freaking Hummel!"

"From your defense of him from little ol' me? Sounded like it," Blaine replied, barely raising his voice.

"Hey!" another voice shouted from down the hall. Quinn probably had just gotten out of her last class, and she was coming toward the two in the hall, fire in her eyes and her hands on her hips. "Karofsky, don't you dare raise your hand against my boy again!"

Karofsky glanced at her, seeing the fire behind her eyes. The social structure, it seemed, went from the jocks down to the losers, with Kurt and Rachel at the tippy top, even though they really had no real clique of their own. Within the jocks, though, it seemed the cheerleaders had the upper hand against the football/basketball/baseball players. And since the head cheerleader was best friends with a soccer player, it seemed the soccer players were maybe a little bit above the football/basketball/baseball players.

Karofsky backed off, but kept his eyes trained on Blaine, "You better stop even trying Blaine Anderson. Just because you're friends with both the jocks and those freaky  _losers_ doesn't mean Hummel will just come running to you like some sort of damsel in distress."

"And he will to you, Karofsky?" Blaine asked, setting his back straight. Quinn helped him by resting her hands on his back and upper shoulder to help align his muscles again from the shock of the metal lockers. "You better put your money where your mouth is, dude."

Karofsky lunged at him, but another person was clearing their throat.

Both boys looked to the sound and saw tiny Kurt Hummel standing with one hand on his bag, and the other in the pocket of his skinny jeans. He had a glare on his face that could stop time and freeze anyone who looked directly at him. Karofsky and Blaine, just to be sure, glanced at his eyes for only a minute before they looked at their feet almost sheepishly.

"As much as I appreciate two gorgeous athletes fighting over me, must I remind you two that you are not in my league, and Karofsky, you won't even get close?" Kurt asked.

"As if Anderson could?" Karofsky sneered at the aforementioned male, not daring to lunge at the one thing keeping him safe from the wibbly-wobbly Rift above their heads.

Kurt looked at Blaine and shook his head, "He has a better chance than you, Karofsky. I don't tend to date people who shove my friends into lockers," he replied calmly.

Blaine couldn't understand why Karofsky was so…  _gentle_  with his attacks when it came to Kurt. Well, he understood a crush when he saw one, and he was reminded that the kids at William McKinley were all ready keeping their heads down about everything. People came out of the closet, or switched cliques and no one really noticed or cared. One's friends might wonder or cheer for them, but… popularity wasn't as important as… not getting sucked into the Rift or having some spirit running around possessing teachers and threatening students (and that was a good day).

Karofsky was so different when he had a genuine crush. It was like Quinn going out of her way to be nice to Rachel. Maybe Blaine was a bit of a geek when it came to human behavior, but he was allowed to find relationships fascinating. He was sure in any other circumstance, Karofsky would be pushing Kurt into lockers instead of Blaine.

Blaine was suddenly thrust out of his thoughts by Kurt, who was saying, "And you, Blaine Anderson. I don't need a knight in shining armor to rescue my honor.  _I'm_  the only one standing between this school and the Rift, and if you take out me, you take out any chance to live."

"So you're your own knight?" Blaine asked, a teasing lilt in his voice.

Karofsky gave him a menacing look, then turned back to Kurt, "Fine. I wasn't going to try anything anyway!" he said, and turned heel to leave down an empty hallway.

Blaine and Quinn looked at each other, then to Kurt. "I wasn't trying to alienate you, Kurt. Karofsky came at me, said some stuff, and I was just defending myself…" Blaine said.

Kurt put up his hand, "Whatever. Careful of that one. His mind wanders a lot and I see a little into his psyche that way, especially during Chemistry class," Kurt replied. "He changes crushes like I change hats, but his crush on me is known by the rest of the school…"

Blaine looked to Quinn, who shrugged and gave him a small nod in agreement. "His first kiss was Puck, but as soon as he came to terms with himself, Kurt was his main object of want."

Kurt nodded, "Now, if you'll excuse me, the jazz bands' instruments have been playing by themselves, and though its not a big deal, Mr. Jenkins has a concert this weekend and the kids won't take their instrument home if I don't do some damage control…"

Quinn and Blaine gave each other a look before they decided getting to the locker rooms was on their agenda.

***

It was an odd day for Karofsky. Sure, the whole school knew about his crush on Kurt, even hailing it as a sort of sweet thing. Karofsky was tough on the field or on the courts, (contrary to popular belief, hockey season was reserved for the winter, and Karofsky was a major player when the snow storms hit), but when it came to Kurt Hummel, he got genuinely kind and almost pure with him. In any other circumstance, there was no chance Karofsky would show it. In this one, because McKinley was so abnormal and Kurt was the only thing keeping the place at least sane, Karofsky actually respected the smaller male.

He did not, however, respect Blaine as much as he once had. Sure, since the kid had come around, he was fascinating (not to mention sexy as sin), and Karofsky had been at least interested… but when it came to Kurt… Karofsky was almost obsessively overprotective in his own special ways.

"Hey, Karofsky. I heard you shoved my boy in the lockers," Puck said after the teams' practices, crossing his arms over his chest. Karofsky had lost some weight from football season, as most baseball players did in spring, so Puck's light shove actually made the other propel backwards just a tad. Behind Puck were Finn, the three main Cheerios, and Anthony. Azimio came on the defense of Karofsky, of course.

"Hey,  _you_  back off  _my_  boy," Azimio shouted, getting ready for a shoving match.

Blaine walked in to the locker rooms at that point, having just taken a shower. He had his civilian's clothes on, a towel in his hand as he wiped down his hair. He paused when he saw what was going on and dropped his hands. "Whoa guys. I appreciate what you're doing for me, but I had hoped Karofsky and I could talk about this without you guys getting physical…"

He turned to Karofsky, who saw the genuine kindness in Blaine's eyes and was taken aback. He pulled Azimio back and nodded at Blaine, "You're okay, man," he said, and breezed past him to go take a shower.

***

When Karofsky got out of the shower, he was pretty much alone, the others having gone home or something. Even Azimio had left. Karofsky wasn't sure if he wanted to go home to his out-of-it father (no mother), or if he just wanted to call up a friend. The latter was a bad idea, since he had just come from a week of doing that with Azimio, and the poor guy was beginning to wonder what was wrong with Karofsky. There were several things wrong with Dave, including his unrequited crush on Kurt Hummel. But there was nothing Dave could do about that short of forcing the boy into something… but that wasn't honorable, and if his father had taught him  _anything_  (by not doing it himself, mind you), it was to be honorable.

As Karofsky redressed into his civilian clothes, he thought about Blaine and how honorable the other was. Less heroic than Kurt, but then again, the aforementioned teen had been heroic to a fault ever since their freshman year.

"Thinking pretty hard about him, aren't you?" a voice said from behind Dave.

Dave spun around pretty fast, dropping his jacket as he did. There, sitting on the bench at the end of the locker row, was an oddly dressed gentlemen of about 14 or 15 years old, young-looking, though. He had shaggy brown curls and bright olive eyes. He wore glasses, a purple polo shirt, and skinny jeans, and his shoes were black cloth Converse-looking types. He had his legs crossed with his hands clasped, holding the higher knee.  _He was also transparent_.

"Who the fuck are you man?" Karofsky asked, hand flying to his heart.

"Alexander Chiffon. Former student here, and… and I would have been Kurt's father had I not  _died_ ," he said, an egotistical flair in his nasally voice.

"A nerd like you? I mean. I've never seen Kurt's mother, but if she looked anything like Kurt, then she would have been hot. For a girl," Karofsky replied, a slight grimace on his face.

"Okay," Alexander replied, "So I was just her friend when she had her little paranormal police force, much like Kurt. If Burt Hummel hadn't been around, I would have at least had a chance to be her husband after high school. But I died, and that sealed my fate and hers," Alexander stood up and stretched, walking toward the other. "But we've got a little bond here. You, pining after Kurt when he favors Blaine over you. Me, pining over Holly when she favored Burt over me."

Karofsky backed up, "No way, man. You're a fucking  _ghost_ , and I'm fucking  _alive_."

"Ever been possessed before… Karofsky, was it?" Alexander asked, putting one hand on Karofsky's chest and pushing slightly. His hand went  _through_  the living male's chest and Karofsky felt his heart grow cold as Alexander  _stepped into him_ , rendering the living male immobile, and soon he blacked out as well…

***

"I don't get him."

Quinn and Blaine had been up in Blaine's room, lying on the bed and watching movies (all right, it was Friday, and they were going through the first six movies of  _Harry Potter_ … again). They had been on the third movie of  _Harry Potter_ , and were now just about to begin the fourth one, when Blaine had shook his head and sighed. Quinn, giving him an expectant look, hadn't been ready for a discussion on  _Kurt Freaking Hummel_.

"Don't you have some awesome psychic powers? Why don't you use them?" Quinn asked, moving her body so she was facing her friend.

Blaine thought about it for a minute, "I'd need something of his. Did you nick a scarf of his when I wasn't looking?" he asked, joking, but Quinn actually couldn't tell.

Quinn finally laughed and shook her head, "No. But I overheard during lunch that Kurt is staying over at Rachel's tonight…" she raised her eyebrow expectantly, "Coach Sylvester might be getting to me, but I think we can get into his house and you can do a little espionage…"

"What about his dad? Last I heard, he still had a father!" Blaine cried, waving his hands in front of him like he was making the girl back off. He bounced excitedly on the bed as well, making Quinn go up and down with him.

"Yeah… I think Burt is at a mechanics getaway or something. Kurt was talking about it to Rachel at some point in the day… I forgot when…"

Blaine was actually thinking about it. With a girl who had learned espionage (and break-in tactics, Blaine would bet his Doctor Who DVD collection) from one of the best cheerleading coaches in the country (probably the universe, but Blaine feared a Dalek/Klingon invasion if he said it out-loud), he wouldn't get caught, and he really did want to know some things about Kurt Hummel without asking Rachel or even getting close to Kurt…

"All right. We're taking a little espionage break from  _Harry Potter_ ," Blaine said, biting into a Red Vine for added effect.

***

Kurt and Rachel were staying after school watching a rehearsal of the school play. Rachel had suggested it, since they had eradicated the spirits in the costumes, and Kurt had nothing better to do as, his dad was out of town and he was planning on staying with Rachel for most of the weekend anyway. He especially wanted to learn to make that sponge cake that Oliver Berry (one of Rachel's dads) had made for them a couple weeks ago. Kurt's father deserved something special when he got home…

So when rehearsal had got out, (Mr. Ryerson made his actors do two dress rehearsals a day. Kurt could hardly handle only  _watching_  one), Kurt and Rachel got out of the auditorium to an empty hallway… or what they thought was an empty hallway.

"Kurt Hummel?" a voice asked.

Rachel gasped when she saw Karofsky at the end of the hall. The voice, however, was higher than Karofsky's usual low one. Kurt and Rachel turned to each other and nodded, knowing the boy was possessed. They turned back to face the possessed jock head-on, but Karofsky put out his hand out as if to stop them.

"No. I'll leave this body as soon as I give you this warning. Kurt… the box is awakening. Beware of the burning horizon," Karofsky said. "God… you look just like your mother. Whoever you choose to be your other half is extremely lucky… And don't be so mean to this one," here the ghost within Karofsky pointed to his face, "he means well."

And with that, the ghostly presence was gone. Karofsky blinked, shuddered, and fell forward onto the floor. Rachel winced, but Kurt was all ready at the jock's side, checking his vitals. "We've got to get him to the hospital. The ghost wasn't thinking when he possessed him."

Rachel took out her cell phone and dialed 911. "Hello, can I talk to Katie Ryan?"

Katie Ryan was the only paramedic who understood what was going on. She was the type of psychic whose only real power was seeing ghosts. She didn't see the Rift, but she knew about it, and was often on-call for Rachel and Kurt when something drastic happened to anyone at the school.

"Hi, Ms. Ryan. We had a possession and the guy's completely out. Yeah. Yeah, we'll sit with him until you get here. Just give him an IV and let him sleep it off. Uhh… I'm not sure about the family situation… Ask him about it and try to do anything he asks. If he seems a little shocked, have him call Kurt or me about it. Okay, thanks."

Rachel got off the phone and said, "Let's move him to the foyer and wait with him. Poor guy…"

***

Blaine and Quinn got to the Hummel house and parked Quinn's car out back in the alley. After checking the house for any light in the windows, Blaine was hoisted over the fence by Quinn and her cheerleading awesomeness, and he in turn pulled Quinn over. They touched down on the grass and went to the back door. It was locked. Quinn tried a few windows, and saw that the one to the basement was unlocked due to a broken lock.

"Obviously Kurt had to break in to his own house," Blaine hissed as he opened the latch. He chuckled at it. Kurt had made it  _seem_  like it was locked.

The window was small, but Blaine could fit through it. Quinn was about to follow, but Blaine shook his head, "Uh-uh, sister. You keep watch and yell out a wizard swear if you see anyone approaching…"

Quinn nodded and stretched herself to a standing position again, looking the other way before she looked back quickly to ask: "Which ones do you prefer, Harry Freaking Potter?"

"I'm partial to 'Expecto Petronads' myself, my lovely Luna Lovegood…" Blaine replied, a grin on his face.

"Really? I like 'Swish and Flicker.' I should start using that one," Quinn replied, turning her head back to searching the perimeter.

Blaine chuckled and turned to the room to look around. He was in the basement, but looking around in the dark he noticed the form of a bed as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Near the window was a desk, with a picture of Kurt, his father, and the woman Blaine had seen when his pendent had been placed around his neck. So she  _was_  Kurt's mom. They looked so much alike that Blaine had guessed the relation but… it was nice to have proof.

He began looking around the room, his eyes adjusting little by little to the blackness around him. He could have picked anything up: a pillow, one of the hats that lined the walls. Even the scarf Kurt accidently left on his desk… but the one thing that caught the curly-haired psychic's eye was a necklace hanging off the desk lamp. It had a gold chain, with the pendent part being a red heart made of red glass. It looked old and dusty, like it hadn't been worn in a while. Blaine's heart pounded as he reached out to touch the necklace…

And he was transported back into the past. Tears formed in the corner of his eyes, but he also felt a certain happiness. He saw the scene before him: two 14-year-olds; male and female. The girl, a female version of Kurt, had her hand over her mouth as she held the necklace, which was in its box. The boy was smiling at her. "Do you like it, Holly?"

"Oh, 'Xander… I love it!" Holly replied, throwing her arms around the boy. He was skinny, wearing skinny jeans, a purple polo shirt, and dorky glasses that put Blaine's to shame. (Blaine wore contacts, but he wore his glasses in the evenings and in the mornings on weekends.)

The two seemed so happy and comfortable together, but the scene quickly changed, and it was drastic. Holly had run outside, following the sound of a crash Blaine had heard with the scene's change, much like what would happen in a movie's scene change. "Xander?" she cried as she noticed what was going on. The necklace was around her neck now, and she was clutching at it as she ran into the street. A car had stopped, and there was smoke piling out of it. The driver was standing over a broken form of a boy. A boy wearing a purple polo shirt and skinny jeans.

Holly gasped and put her hands over the lower part of her face, tears beginning to form in her eyes. Blaine almost went to the woman to comfort her, but he remembered he was only an observer.

Blaine saw the spirit of 'Xander split from his body. He looked to the sky first, then to Holly. He made to go to her, but she stopped him, "Go toward the light, 'Xander…" Holly said. "I'll see you soon!"

Blaine shuddered as he returned to the present. Holly certainly had seen him soon after that. Too soon, perhaps.

***

Kurt and Rachel were sitting against the wall in the foyer, hands clasped together. Karofsky's head was propped up on Kurt's lap, his torso over Rachel's. Rachel carefully stroked Kurt's hand with her thumb as Kurt stared at something interesting on the floor.

"Beware the burning horizon," he finally said. "Is it even allowed to come back and tell someone of predestined events?"

Rachel looked at him, "That's totally cheating," she replied.

Kurt sighed, "So… why did he possess Karofsky and tell me something I'm not even supposed to know?"

"I think the bigger picture is… who  _was_  he?" Rachel asked.

Kurt looked at Karofsky and fought back the urge to put a lock of Karofsky's hair behind his ear. Anything tender toward the jock was sickening to him. "I saw a glimpse of the ghost's face. My mom had a picture of him in her scrapbook from her freshman year here. Alexander Chiffon. He died in a car crash on her birthday… kind of scarred her a little bit."

Rachel thought about this statement for a minute, "So… maybe he's trying to tell us about things to come to get into your mom's pants now that she's joined him in the Afterlife?"

Kurt elbowed her sharply, but Rachel was snorting, rather unladylike, and fighting back laughter. "Sorry… that was inappropriate."

"I should say so," Kurt replied, but he was smiling. "Brilliantly executed, but highly inappropriate." He went back into thought about the statement, though. "He was normal, gift-free human, so he obviously didn't come because he had seen a vision. Though most spirits develop a sense of predestination while in the Spirit World... Perhaps that's what went down…"

"Or maybe your mom sent him…" Rachel suddenly said, glancing at her friend, eyes wide.

They looked at each other for a minute before they heard the sirens and saw the headlights in the distance and decided to move Karofsky outside. Despite the weight loss, the jock was still pretty heavy, and it took all of Kurt and Rachel's combined strength to carry him outside, but by the time they were there, Katie was running out of the back of the ambulence to help them.

***

"So? Any juicy secrets?" Quinn asked, helping her friend out of the window. She then noticed the tear lines down Blaine's cheeks, even with the dim streetlight as their only light. "What wrong?"

"This was a bad idea," Blaine said. "I'm sorry I even agreed to it…"

"Blainey, what's up?" Quinn asked, a slight whine in her voice and a mixture of anxiety and worry in her beautiful eyes.

He sniffed, wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve and shook his head, "I touched the wrong thing, saw the wrong memory, and now I just wanna go home, eat a giant Hershey's bar and whine about the butterflies in my stomach and how it's all Kurt's fault, that  _bitch_!" he said, trying to lighten the mood, but mostly to get his mind off Holly's last words to her best friend:  _Go toward the light, 'Xander. I'll see you soon._

Quinn put an arm around Blaine's waist, "See what's its like? Being a psychic, and having a crush on one? Coming to terms with the latter, eh?"

Blaine grinned, "Maybe. If I went through all this to figure out a tiny bit about him, I must…" he trailed off, thinking about Kurt wanting Blaine to join the paranormal police team he had created, "… I must at least want  _something_  to do with him…"

Quinn looked at Blaine and crooked her head at him. "What are you thinking, Blainey?" she asked, acting as if he was about to take cookies from the cookie jar or something else that was childishly mischievous (she wouldn't hold it against him to do something childishly mischievous, the little dork).

"Well, my dear Quinny. It's all elementary, you see," Blaine replied, going into a British accent and pretending to spoke a pipe. "I think I might join Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry's little crusade against spirit spillage from the Rift."


	5. Ghost Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used: 'Belle' from Beauty and the Beast  
> 'Prince Ali' from Aladdin  
> 'Hakuna Matata' from The Lion King  
> 'Something There'from Beauty and the Beast

"Favorite  _Harry Potter_  book?" Rachel asked.

After Blaine had told Quinn he was going to join up with Kurt and Rachel, she had nodded her head, told him good luck, and set up the rule that they would hang out three nights a week, "Bros before hos, but work before pleasure," was her little mantra.

That night, Blaine had called Rachel and Kurt and had told them of his decision. It was now a week since then, and Quinn and Blaine kept their promise, but tonight was a special night that the detectives were roping off to really get to know each other.

"That's really a question in there?" Blaine asked, looking over the card Rachel was reading off. "That's unfair."

"Answer it, McDorkyPants," Rachel replied, swiping the card out of Blaine's sight. Kurt gave the two a smile from his spot rearranging the bed so that they could all watch _Treasure Planet_  with Blaine in the middle.

"How dare you separate us!" Rachel had shouted at the thought.

"Well… sacrifices happen. You face that every single time you save WMHS," was Blaine's retort.

"Darn! I guess… the first one. Because its classic, and because there's less capslock Harry," Blaine replied, and grabbed another card from the deck.

"Kurt! You got a dare! Choose a song with a name in it, choose a person to sing to, and replace the name in the song with the person's name."

Kurt sighed, grabbed Rachel's hairbrush (they seemed to do most things at Rachel's house, for some odd reason. Blaine had some idea why, but he didn't say anything about the night he broken in to Kurt's room) and turned as if he was going to sing to Rachel. Suddenly, as he was just starting, he turned his eyes to Blaine:

" _Look, there he goes, that boy is so peculiar_  
I wonder if he's feeling well  
with a dreamy, far-off look  
and his nose stuck in a book  
what a puzzle to the rest of us is Blaine…"

"Cute choice, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel," Rachel replied, laughing, "That actually works."

"Who would be Gaston in my life…" Blaine suddenly thought out loud, tapping his chin with the card.

Kurt scoffed, put the hairbrush down, and grabbed a card, "Blaine, I'm getting back at you for making me sing my guilty pleasure. You got a dare too," he looked up at both of them," Who shuffled this deck?"

Blaine raised his hand almost sheepishly, smiling as he looked at his feet and muttered, "I… I might have… that might have…" then he cleared his throat, gave Kurt a cheeky grin, and raised both eyebrows.

Kurt shook his head, hand absentmindedly fluttering to his heart, "Anyway… It says here you have to quote your least favorite part of any movie you choose, and the rest of the players have to rate you. The reader of this card—oh! That's me!—gets to dole out your punishment or reward… This should be fun," Kurt replied.

"Any movie?" Blaine asked, lowering one of his eyebrows.

"Any movie, but your least favorite part," Kurt replied.

"All right. Mostly because I hate the character… and this might hit home a bit, you two. Don't hurt me," Blaine replied. "Least favorite quote? From  _Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl_ , I give you…" here he paused for effect before: "' I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore, Captain Barbossa.'"

Kurt and Rachel looked at each other, twin looks on their faces: eyebrow raised and little smirks turning up at the corners of their mouths.

"I'd give that ten stars out of ten, my dear Kurt," Rachel replied.

"Really? Because he didn't use a girlish voice, nor did he do anything to really make me feel that he was quoting a girl. I'll give him four stars out of ten."

"You have a point, but do give the boy a bit of a chance, your punishments are really awful…" Rachel replied, "I say we bring it up to a six, and that takes four points off for not acting like a girl when he quoted it. He was perfect in the wording," she pointed out.

Kurt sighed, "Fine. Blaine, be lucky Rachel can only rate someone's singing," he replied. "And you have to sing a song to me. In the same vein as mine, only it must be a Disney song from  _your_  collection of favorites. And just a little part of it, as I'm sure Rachel is itching to ask you another question or give you another dare…"

Blaine smiled, "Lovely. Better take your socks off before I knock 'em off."

He stood up, making both Kurt and Rachel bounce a little on the bed. Blaine grabbed the hairbrush Kurt had deposited and began to sing:

" _Prince Kurtie! Fabulous he!_  
Kurtie the psychic  
Genuflect, show some respect  
Down on one knee!  
Now, try your best to stay calm  
Brush up your Sunday salaam  
Then come and meet his spectacular coterie

 _Prince Kurtie!_  
Mighty is he!  
Kurtie the psychic  
Strong as ten regular men, definitely!  
He faced the galloping hordes  
A hundred bad guys with swords  
Who sent those goons to their lords?  
Why, Prince Kurtie…"

He finished his little bit, but before he even allowed his two audience members to do anything, he turned to Kurt and, just to him, sang a little more of the song, though slower and flirtier than the usual lyrics had been:

" _There's no question this Kurtie's alluring_  
Never ordinary, never boring  
Everything about the man just plain impresses  
He's a winner, he's a whiz, a wonder!  
He's about to pull my heart asunder!  
And I absolutely love the way he dresses!"

Kurt's eyes widened and he pressed his hand to his chest and leaned back into Rachel a little. "It's not 'A Whole New World,' but you do know how to woo a man with a Disney song…"

"Who said I was wooing, Kurtie?" Blaine asked, smirking slightly. "Now… I want to see me some  _Treasure Planet_  before midnight, so can we continue this little game later?"

"Sure can, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson," Rachel replied, and Blaine grinned, almost skipping to his backpack to grab his laptop and the movie.

***

"That movie's so cute," Rachel said as Blaine wiggled out of Kurt's grip to put away the movie.

"I want Morph as my pet," Blaine replied. "If I can't have Jim, then I want Morph… and maybe B.E.N without his mind..."

"I won Jim fair and square, Anderson," Kurt replied, "And I didn't need to read your mind to know you were going to keep doing 'rock.'"

"You guys are fighting over the wrong character!" Rachel retorted, "Captain Amelia is one fine feline."

"And since you can mate with the cat people in the  _Doctor Who_  episode 'Gridlock,' I'm sure you and Amelia will live a lovely, Alternate Universe life together," Blaine replied, putting his laptop and the DVD away in his backpack.

"You're such a dork, Blaine," Rachel replied, throwing a pillow at him. He caught it and jumped back on the bed, nearly crashing into Kurt as he did so.

"Hello, lovely," he said, his head on Kurt's chest. He glanced up at Kurt and saw the other's mouth form into a thin line, but Kurt's cheeks flushed, and Blaine mentally patted himself on the back. "You guys wanna keep asking those card questions, or do you want to do something else?"

"Are you going to get off me, Anderson, if we do this 'something else?'" Kurt asked, not necessarily angry just… embarrassed, perhaps?

"Maybe… but I don't make any promises. Your chest is as comfortable as Rachel's stomach and I'm contemplating combining the two into the perfect pillow…"

Rachel and Kurt gave each other grossed-out looks, but Rachel couldn't help but cover the bottom-half of her mouth with her hands and giggle uncontrollably. "What did you have in mind, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson?" she asked after she had gotten over herself.

"Stories!" Blaine replied, moving off of Kurt's person and rolling on his back. "Have you heard my epic story of how gravity almost killed me?" Blaine asked.

"Which one?" Kurt asked, "We've heard several."

"Damn. Then… since you guys know about how  _I_  Awakened… why don't you tell me how  _you_  did?" Blaine asked, looking first to Kurt and then to Rachel.

Rachel and Kurt exchanged looks, but whatever telepathic battle they were having was won by Rachel, who took Blaine's hand and said. "Well… quite literally, my story begins on a dark and stormy afternoon."

***

"I was in eighth grade, like I said. It was my last year in middle school and I was making the best of it. I was enrolled in a theater class  _and_  choir, and I went out for the lead role in  _The Boyfriend_.

"At this point, I had only heard stories about the Rift at the high school, and I wasn't even really paying attention to them. Quinn was my best friend, and she was my only world after all the performing arts I was doing. Don't give me that look, Kurt Hummel. It's true. I was in love with Quinn my eighth grade year, and I had known she was bisexual because she told me when I told her I liked girls over boys.

"I thought we were going to be together forever, but that all changed one day.

"I was in the choir room during a free block, practicing a solo for a concert I would have in a few days. It was dark and stormy outside, and the principal of the school had been warning us of a school closure.

"Anyway, there was a substitute teacher who had been taking over our math class while the usual one was having a baby and then taking some time off work to care for it. Anyway, this woman was so hot, I couldn't stop thinking about her… and as I was singing… she walked in on me, completely in a trance. Well, of course I stopped singing, and she snapped out of it.

"I figured something went wrong, but then I did some research when I got home about psychic things like that. Rather, all my searches came to that conclusion. I had Awakened.

"But I was so freaked out I quit everything to do with performing arts where I had to sing. I pushed away my friends, and when I tried to talk to Quinn again… she had totally changed and wanted nothing to do with me.

"Then high school came around, I met Kurt two months in, and he helped me control my siren's song and I joined him in his crusade to save the school…" Rachel finished her story and turned to her audience, who was wide-eyed, "I had come to terms with being psychic in eighth grade, I just didn't know how everything worked. Usually psychics attract other psychics when they Awaken and the seasoned psychic mentors him or her."

"So happy my Awakening happened this year, you two were around to help me, and I'm sorry for any stupidity I happen to do in the future," Blaine replied.

Rachel laughed, "You certainly are lucky you have us, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson…"

"How did  _that_  start?" Blaine asked, "Saying someone's first name three times, the third time pairing it with their last name?"

"Rachel hadn't spoken to anyone, afraid it was everything about her voice that controlled people, so when she first met me, she stuttered out my name when I approached her and coddled her into speaking with me by preaching mentorship…" Kurt replied, smiling. Then, playfully mocking his lesbian friend: "Hello, K-Kurt… K-K-Kurt… K-Kurt Hummel…"

"He came right back with, 'Lovely to meet you, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry…'" Rachel replied, mocking the other right back. "It just turned into a term of affection to continue it with other friends we made. Namely, just you… but you get the idea."

Blaine was grinning at the story, "That's totally awesome."

Kurt and Rachel gave him twin smiles from either side of him, both looking like crosses between the Cheshire Cat and David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. (Only Blaine could make  _that_  connection.)

Blaine turned to Kurt, slipping his hand out from Rachel's and squeezing the taller boy's elbow. "Now you, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel…" he said.

Kurt eyes darkened, but he nodded and sighed a little. "All right. Guess I should start with my mother…"

***

"My mother was born Holly Jessica Smith. That's not important except for the fact that she was one of the first guardians of the Rift. You see, it was opened by a very stupid boy who was my mom's best friend her freshman year. Because of a little slip-up, he opened the Rift up at McKinley, and there was nothing anyone could do."

Blaine had to interject, "Was this 'stupid boy' named Alexander Chiffon?"

Rachel slapped him on the upper part of his arm, "How did you know?"

"Research," Blaine lied, rolling his eyes a little and turning back to Kurt. "Go on."

Kurt raised an eyebrow at Blaine, but continued: "Because she couldn't reverse what Alexander Chiffon had done, my mom promised to keep McKinley safe. And she did. Even though she lost faith when Alexander died when they were freshman, she picked up the pieces and worked harder than ever. But she failed to find someone who would take her place when she graduated, and when she went to New York for college, she left WMHS in chaos.

"Well… my mom graduated high school, met my father, got married, and had me. She gave me her powers, and it was apparent about a day after I had come home. I had created the illusion of a bowl of water. I guess I had seen one earlier and was recreating it or something.

"I also learned to talk earlier because I was reading people's thoughts. So Mom had to teach me to control my abilities as well as how to talk, eat by myself, and go to the bathroom in the toilet instead of my pants.

"Then… when I was eight… the chaos at WMHS came back and bit her in the butt, so to speak.

"You see, the Rift naturally opens on Halloween night, but only the spirits of loved ones are allowed through. All over the world this happens; so on Halloween, my mother at least kept an eye out… you know… for her grandparents and long-lost pets and that sort of thing.

"But… some evil spirits got through the inner guards. Revengeful spirits, who remembered my mother, found her and… and killed her. I watched the whole thing…" Here Kurt looked off to the side, as he was about to cry. Blaine sat up straighter and took his hand.

"You can stop, if you like…" he whispered.

"No," Kurt replied, not letting the other even touch him. He threw off Blaine's hand and moved so that his body was turned away from the other two. "You need to know this. Fair's fair. I know almost everything about you, but you know almost nothing about me…

"Anyway… after her death, everyone forgot about that night except me. Since I was eight, I couldn't really do anything… but as I grew up I remembered my mother and promised I would take her spot so that… so that no one else would get hurt…" Kurt was looking away from them, his eyes wet but the tears hardly falling.

Blaine looked to Rachel, who obviously knew the story.  _So-why-hadn't-she-said-anything? Why-didn't-she-stop-me-from-asking? I-feel-like-a-complete-asshole! Merlin's-freaking-pants!_

"I'm sorry, Kurt," Blaine said, his face, voice, and body gone tense and humorless.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Kurt replied mournfully. "Without my mother's death, there would still be fear, chaos, and the occasional bloody death at the high school. Think about it. Cheerleaders would be possessed, gingerbread people causing havoc. The school would have been shut down. You would be going to a different school… You _definitely_ wouldn't have met me."

"My life would be a bit more sane, yes," Blaine replied, his humor flickering a little behind his brilliant hazel eyes. "But what's the fun in that?" he whispered, wrapping his arms around the other boy and giving a look at Rachel to do the same.

She grinned, moved from her spot on her back at the edge of her own bed, and glomped both of them, pinning them under her. Kurt let out a high-pitched giggle, and Blaine laughed and flinched violently when Rachel came down on them. "Off! Off! Lest I give you all the Jelly-Legs Jinx!"

Rachel sat up on her knees, watching as the boys struggled to get up from being crushed under Rachel. Rachel wasn't chubby in the least, but neither Kurt nor Blaine had been ready for her hugging assault. "Hush, Blaine McDorkyPants. We all know the counter-curse to that is just 'Unjellify,'" she replied matter-of-factly, flipping her brown hair over her shoulders.

Blaine's smile widened and he looked to Kurt, "Blast it all. She knows my secrets," he told the other.

Kurt put a hand over his mouth as he laughed, "Don't get me started. I heard your thoughts about me and Rachel being like the Doctor and his companion…"

"That was a private thought, Kurt Hummel," Blaine replied, his voice rising but his smile widening even more.

Rachel put her hands out in front of her, "Shhh! My dads are probably asleep."

Both Blaine and Kurt went a little sheepish: hunching their shoulders and putting their index fingers to their lips. They gave Rachel a sort of pleading look before they looked over to the door as if either one of Rachel's dads would walk in, and when neither did, they still whispered, as one, "Sorry, Oliver and Greg Berry…"

Rachel giggled and checked her alarm clock, "Jeez… it's midnight!"

"The witching hour!" Blaine said, keeping his voice down.

"Shut up," Rachel replied. "You want to keep playing the truth or dare cards, or do you want to go to sleep… since story time didn't get young Blaine Anderson tired, hardly."

"Places to bring chaos too! Chaos never sleeps!" Blaine replied.

Kurt shook his head and moved so that he joined Rachel in the middle of the bed, "I don't think the prospect of sleep will come anytime soon, my little Gooseberry…" Kurt replied, grabbing a card, "Blaine, will you sit still for a minute? I have to ask you this truth question!"

"Aye, aye, captain," Blaine replied, and ceased the hyperactive bouncing he had been doing.

Kurt shook his head before reading off the card, "'As a child, who was/were your imaginary friends?'"

Blaine's head fell in his hands and he let out a low groan, "Where did you find this deck, Rachel?" he asked.

"An aunt gave it to me," Rachel replied, "Now stop evading the question, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson!"

"Well… after watching  _Aladdin_  the genie became my imaginary friend… I also had the tiger from that movie… and I swore when I was six or seven that my bedroom lamp sang me to sleep like in  _Beauty and the Beast_. The only creative imaginary friend I had was a talking flying unicorn named Bailey. And that imaginary friend was androgynous and its gender switched every minute or so…" Blaine replied, his eyes still covered.

Rachel and Kurt chuckled slightly at each other, and Rachel grabbed a card before Blaine could. "Oh ho ho!" she cried. "'Choose two of your companions and make them sing a duet together!" She grinned at the two boys, "I see only you two. Go!"

Kurt and Blaine looked to each other, wide-eyed and suddenly not smiling. Kurt wasn't sure what song they would sing, and he wouldn't read the other's boy's thoughts on the matter. It was a breach of privacy to do so. Blaine wasn't smiling because he was thinking to hard and too much about a duet they could sing.

Song names flashed in Blaine's mind, but they all seemed a bit inappropriate for a lovely spring night, days before the end of their sophomore year and the beginning of their junior year… Suddenly he looked at Kurt and remembered something. He remembered Holly's memory of her best friend dying, the story Kurt had just told of her death. He took all of that, and began to sing:

 _"Hakuna Matata!_  
What a wonderful phrase  
Hakuna Matata!  
Ain't no passing craze…"

Kurt stared at him, but saw the sparkling aura behind Blaine's eyes. Kurt grinned slightly and started in on the next few lyrics.

" _It means no worries_  
For the rest of your days  
It's our problem-free philosophy  
Hakuna Matata!"

Blaine smiled and replied, still singing:  _"Hakuna Matata!"_

He waggled his eyebrows at Kurt, telling him to continue. And Kurt did:

_"Why...when he was a young warthog…"_

Blaine jumped back in as Pumba:

_"When I was a young warthog!"_

"Very nice."

"Thanks."

After the short spoken exchange (with plenty of hammy acting, it should be noted), the two continue singing, Kurt as Timon and Blaine as Pumba:

_"He found his aroma lacked a certain appeal  
He could clear the savannah after ev'ry meal."_

_"I'm a sensitive soul though I seem thick-skinned_  
And it hurt that my friends never stood downwind  
And, oh, the shame—"

_"—Oh, the shame!—"_

_"—Thought of changin' my name—"_

_"—What's in a name?—"_

_"—And I got downhearted—"_

_"—How did ya feel?—"_

_"—Ev'rytime that I—"_

Kurt suddenly put a hand over Blaine's mouth and pointed to Rachel, who huffed a little when he was done with the lyric. "—Hey, Pumbaa! Not in front of the kids!"

Gently prying Kurt's awesome grip from his lower mouth, Blaine replied, "Oh, sorry."

They glared playfully at each other before they 'remembered' the song and continued singing after they both took a deep breath for effect:

 _"Hakuna Matata!_  
What a wonderful phrase  
Hakuna Matata!  
Ain't no passing craze."

Kurt took over for Simba's part, and Blaine let him,  _"It means no worries for the rest of your days!"_

And then they came together again:

 _"It's our problem-free philosophy_  
Hakuna Matata!  
Hakuna Matata! Hakuna Matata!  
Hakuna Matata! Hakuna Matata!  
Hakuna Matata! Hakuna Matata!  
Hakuna Matata! Hakuna -

 _It means no worries for the rest of your days_  
It's our problem-free philosophy  
Hakuna Matata!

_Hakuna Matata!_

_I say "Hakuna"  
I say "Matata""_

When they finished, Rachel looked to the door, and when her neither of her fathers came through asking what was going on, she turned back to the two breathless boys and clapped excitedly for them. "That was wonderful, you two. You guys can really get into some awesome harmony together…" she said, obviously hinting at something else. But Blaine was yawning.

"Man…  _that_  got me tired. And look," he said, looking at the alarm clock, "It's nearly one in the morning. I think… I think I'll just close my eyes for a moment," he said.

Rachel smiled, "Surefire way to get any child tired? Sing songs together and read stories…" she said to Kurt as she pulled back the covers and let Blaine take his choice of position on the bed. He chose the edge.

"Go on… I'm not going to separate you two much longer tonight…" he said, and rolled over, his eyes closing.

Kurt checked him, "Dreaming. I can tell it's a nice dream, filled with magic and blue boxes…" he replied, winking at Rachel. "You next, my Gooseberry."

"Oh no, young Hummel," Rachel replied, putting her hands on her hips like a mother from the 50's. "You get that little tush in bed next to Anderson right this minute."

"But why?" Kurt asked, "You like him better."

Rachel smiled, "It doesn't take a psychic to know what just happened all through this night, my dear," she replied. "You like  _Beauty and the Beast_  so much, I think you can find the lyrics that fit."

The two settled under the covers, Kurt sidling up in between Rachel and Blaine. Rachel was as tired as Blaine was, and Kurt could soon feel the buzz of dreaming from both of them. He moved to go spoon Rachel, but then thought about what she said. Looking over at Blaine, he moved the blanket up to the other boy's chin when he saw the boy shudder a little.

Then he sang a little, softly, so no one would wake up. Not that they would, because the song wasn't the type to wake  _anyone_  up:

" _She glanced this way_  
I thought I saw  
And when we touched  
She didn't shudder at my paw  
No it can't be  
I'll just ignore  
But then she's never looked at me that way before…"


	6. Lovely Bones

There were many things Quinn liked about fall. Besides the leaves turning pretty colors and more clothes being piled on, it meant that she could see Rachel more regularly and it also meant that the boys would be putting away their baseball jerseys and be putting on their football jerseys. She was a year-round cheerleader, cheering mostly for the football, basketball and hockey, and the soccer teams.

Blaine, of course, was on the soccer team, so games were constantly hopped around so that the cheer squad could cheer for both the football and soccer teams in fall, basketball, hockey, and soccer teams in winter, and spring was free, because the cheer squad refused to cheer at baseball games, and so they only worried about cheering at soccer games then. Sue must have had Quinn's friendship with the star forward on her mind when she scheduled the cheer squad's performances.

It had been a successful summer for the two, despite the constant work-related rain checks and other cancellations or rescheduling between the two friends. Quinn was actually getting sick of Blaine's partiality to hanging out with Rachel and Kurt. She almost wished her ability would magically manifest again when Kurt and Rachel came to pick Blaine up when Quinn and Blaine were having a picnic in the park one afternoon. But the last time it happened was on one of the darkest days of her life: she had been kicked out of her house, the spirits were attacking the high school and there was a certain darkness over the whole town that no one could get through until…  _something_ happened and it was all over. Quinn liked to think her glowing had stopped the spirits and helped take away the darkness. And maybe it was true.

Quinn missed having Blaine all to herself. It wasn't that she was jealous of Kurt and Rachel. She liked that Blaine was brave enough to shed almost all his normality and help out at every chance he could. She loved him for it. She was only jealous that he even had the guts to do what she couldn't. He was getting help from Kurt and Rachel with his ability (which Quinn had seen once or twice when she had made the mistake of giving him her jacket at the movies or something liked that).

Her ability was manifesting again. Over the summer she had gone away for a few weeks to someplace she thought was normal. Then she had passed by a graveyard, and seen some spirits (maybe it carried over from her being registered at McKinley or something) sitting on their gravestones. Seeing that she could see them, they went to her, and as they touched her, she noticed she had been glowing.  _The spirits were following the glow_. She had, of course, ran, and when she looked back, they were gone.  _And she had stopped glowing._

After that, Quinn liked to go to the graveyard, and upon her return, took a lot of walks in the afternoon to the nearest one. She was mostly alone when she went; the other spirits were probably in their final resting places beyond the Rift.

When school started, though, her walk-schedule was broken, and she had to start taking her graveyard walks in the evening after dinner, before she settled in to finish up her homework.

So one September night after dinner, she blew off Mercedes again, and took her walk out in the crisp air, watching the leaves that were slowly turning red, orange, and yellow. She took a sharp right, then a left, then continued walking forward until the graveyard came in sight…

… And so did some singing.

"Kurt… it didn't work last time and it's not working now. That spirit is deaf or it just—"

"—Blaine's right," Rachel replied, stopping her song. "That spirit isn't swaying under my spell. It's neither spirit nor human, and either way I don't want all the spirits around coming with me, nor do I want to lead a bunch of humans into the Rift either…"

Quinn froze, turned heel, and ran back home.

***

It had been going on for a couple of weeks now. The spirit, or whatever it was, would enter the graveyard, dig around for any loose bones it could find, and then leave. Blaine, Kurt and Rachel could neither find where the spirit had gone, nor did they know what it was doing. After a few weeks of observing it, Kurt decided it was time it should be stopped.

But it didn't take to Rachel's song like the others, and nor could Kurt get inside its head. When the spirit began wearing a dark cloak (that made it look disturbingly like the Grim Reaper), they thought about stealing it, but it was a slippery little spirit, and they could hardly get a hand on it, nor could they even find it when it vanished into thin air. Blaine only caught a glimpse of its true form once.

"It looks like a walking skeleton," he said, a grimace on his face. "A walking skeleton. No fleshy looking parts like the others. It's the Grim Reaper. It's got to be."

"No such thing. You die, the Rift sucks you up, you see your loved ones, are led down a garden path into a little cottage and that's it," Kurt replied.

"Interviewing spirits to get prepared for the big day, huh?" Blaine asked, only half joking.

Kurt rolled his eyes, smiling only a little bit. "Shut up. If only we knew what was going on. Why  _this_  spirit, why can't either me or Rachel do anything about it?"

Blaine began twiddling his thumbs, his eyes skyward. Suddenly a high voice pitched from his mouth, "If only there was some awesome guy in our group who could touch that thing's cloak and see what it's doing…"

Rachel and Kurt blinked, looking off in the original directions they had been before Blaine had suggested this seemingly harmless task. Then they looked at each other before they looked at Blaine. "And that, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel, is why we needed him," Rachel pointed out.

Blaine gave Kurt a smug smirk, and Kurt shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. "All right… new plan. We—"

Suddenly Blaine's phone went off (It played the main theme of  _Harry Potter_ , which broke him off the others), "Shoot… one second."

He opened his phone, ignoring the name that showed up (David Karofsky) "Yeah?"

" _Blaine. I thought we were meeting up tonight._ "

"Oh, hey, Dave."

Kurt's smile faded and he grimaced. Rachel saw the look of disappointment flash behind his eyes for a second, and then looked to Blaine again.

" _I just… I just wanted to know that we were still… meeting,_ " Dave said, sounding pretty embarrassed on the other end. Azimio probably wasn't there, because Karofsky still put up a front despite his sweetness when he was around Kurt (and now Blaine, apparently).

It had started the beginning of August. Blaine had soccer camp at McKinley from nine in the morning until about two in the afternoon. The football team also had camp from about six in the morning to one in the afternoon. Blaine and his team took the spacious soccer fields, and just beyond a fence was where the football team practiced. They both had a lunch break at about eleven, and that's how Karofsky and Blaine got close. Puck, Finn, and Anthony (Mercedes' boyfriend) started coming over to join Blaine and some of his teammates (namely, the other forward: Jeremy, and some mid-fielders: Elliot, Thomas and Nathan) starting from the first day, so Karofsky and Azimio followed.

Over the month, Karofsky slowly got up the nerve to sit right next to Blaine and talk about their sports, then about their summers, and finally Karofsky asked him out for smoothies. He had been a gentleman about it all, or at least as much as he could be. Blaine thought him a sweet individual. Inexperienced, but at least brave enough to do something about his feelings.

Blaine blushed on the other end of the phone, "Uh, yeah. We are. But that's not for another two hours, Dave…" he said, checking Kurt's wrist for the darling wristwatch he had given him for his birthday over the summer.

" _I know, I know. I'm sorry. This is kind of my first first date with someone…_ " Dave replied sheepishly.

"No, I think it's cute. But no, you don't have to worry. I'll see you at Breadstix in two hours…" Blaine replied.

After they had hung up, Kurt looked off to where the spirit in the graveyard was rooting and rolled his eyes, "At least you didn't do the sickening 'no you hang up' thing…"

Blaine glanced him and shrugged, "What's the plan?"

"Rachel's getting the cloak," Kurt said, pointing to the girl.

Rachel was sneaking up to the spirit. She looked like a granny from this far away, in her blue and white plaid skirt, knee high white socks, mary-janes and the freakish yellow sweater Blaine was so fond of. But she was efficient. She waited until the spirit was rooting for more bones in the dirt, and silently grabbed the bottom of the cloak and pulled, running behind some bushes when the half-completed skeleton-spirit-thing turned around looking for it's cloak.

Rachel was already half way out of reach, and Kurt and Blaine were soon following her.

"That was easier done than said," Rachel replied. She turned to Blaine, "You seemed busy, so I just took off and waited it out until it was rooting again."

Blaine sighed, "Have I mentioned how sorry I am? Look, if you guys were a little more social and joined more groups,  _you_  could have dates for tonight too!"

"I'm part of choir," Rachel pointed out. "But none of the other lesbians or even any of the bisexual girls seem interested."

 _And you're probably still pining for Quinn_ , Blaine thought, turning to Kurt for his excuse.

"I'm too busy this year," Kurt replied, and pulled forward, spitting off from the group to go home.

Rachel and Blaine hung back, and then completely stopped in their tracks as Kurt took a right without even waiting for them. They turned to each other. "If that spirit's weirdness is still eating at him, he's  _never_  going to find a boyfriend," Blaine replied.

Rachel gave him a pained expression, "He had his eyes on someone… but they seem a little clueless, and they're taken now," she said quietly as Blaine went off to his own house, walking briskly. She looked around warily before she made her own way home, shaking her head at the drama that had suddenly popped up… she realized, though, too late that she still had the spirit-skeleton-thing's cloak…

***

"Why now?" Kurt asked, watching as Blaine and Karofsky shyly held hands under the table of jocks a couple tables down. "Why him? Why Karofsky?"

"Maybe he's turned on by jocks," Rachel said, rubbing her face hard with her fingertips.

Kurt had been at it for two days now. Ever since Karofsky had phoned Blaine in the middle of the stakeout, Kurt had been ignoring Blaine's phone-calls and texts, and had been completely blowing him off during school. Kurt went home alone, not even caring about the bone-snatching spirit.

Rachel had been worrying about him, mostly due to his obsession now with picking apart the relationship between Blaine and Karofsky. Sure, it was out-of-the-blue, and it looked like both boys were almost faking their 'feelings' for each other, but Rachel was hardly thinking about that.

"Yeah, but he's also turned on by dorkiness," Kurt replied, "Like attracts like, right?"

"This isn't some physics lab, Kurt," Rachel replied, no affectionate tone in her voice. She was tired of Kurt's attitude, "And you had your chance," she said, and stood up, leaving the cafeteria even though it was only twenty minutes into lunch.

Kurt blinked, but only slumped in his seat and lay his head soundlessly on the table.

Quinn saw the exchange and looked down at her half-finished meal. She then pushed it off toward Mercedes (who was cuddling up with Anthony) and went out of the cafeteria without a word.

***

"Rachel?" a small voice said from behind her. Rachel spun around quickly, having been rubbing her temples against the edge of the lockers for a good five minutes.

"Quinn?" Rachel asked, "Quinn Fabray?"

"The one and only," Quinn replied, a little nervous. "Listen… I know you and your bestie are having a rough time… but I need your help."

Rachel blinked, and then began to laugh, "The Great Quinn Fabray needs my help?" she asked.

"Look, you're up higher than me, so just shut up and hear me out," Quinn said, pointing out the obvious and then crossing her arms over her chest. "I've Awakened. Then my power disappeared and now it's coming back again."

That shut Rachel up. Her eyes widened a little, and she looked the other up and down before circling her like a hawk. Quinn was initially uncomfortable, but spun around with Rachel after a few minutes. "What? It's not gonna happen now. I… I glow."

Rachel felt like she had been hit with a ton of bricks. Hadn't Blaine asked about all this? So… didn't he know and was just being cute to cover things up? Rachel composed herself by closing her eyes and putting her hands in front of her like she was pushing something down. Then she opened her eyes, "You were correct in coming to me. Though Kurt would have been a better choice, I am fully capable in helping you hone you psychic skill…"

"I'll think about joining your little group," Quinn suddenly said. When Rachel just stared at her, Quinn looked off to the side, "I mean… I just want to learn how to control it, and then… and then maybe I'll join you, Kurt and Blaine…"

Rachel nodded, "All right. I'll keep these meetings between you and me secret then. If Kurt knew he'd be very insistent and you wouldn't get any peace," she said, taking out her phone, "Can I have your number?"

Quinn nodded and they exchanged numbers quickly before Quinn suddenly looked down the hall, expecting to see a ghost. "Look, I'll meet you at your house after school, okay? You haven't moved or anything since… since middle school, right?"

Rachel smiled and shook her head, "No."

"Good…" Quinn nodded, flustered, and then took off down the hall.

Rachel looked at the new contact in her phone and bit her bottom lip happily. Then she remembered Kurt and went back in the cafeteria to start repairs.

***

There was no practices that afternoon, so Quinn had a little time to visit with Blaine. Blaine and Karofsky awkwardly parted at the door as Quinn and Blaine went to walk down to the nearest café before Quinn would go to Rachel's, and Blaine would probably go home. Quinn had noticed Blaine was spending less time with Kurt, and Kurt was back to ignoring her best friend.

"How… How are you, Blainey?" Quinn asked.

"I'm fine… how are you doing, Quinny?" Blaine asked, thinking it was some sort of joke that they were acting like they hadn't really seen each other when they had talked during their last class (they had Spanish together at the end of the day).

"I'm good. I, uh, I'm repairing things with Rachel now that I… told her about my gift."

Blaine smiled, "Is Kurt breathing down your neck?"

"No… Rachel promised she would help in secret until I was… ready to… to  _maybe_  join you guys," Quinn replied, then quickly changed the subject as they got to the café and Blaine ordered for the both of them. "How are… how are you and Karofsky?"

"Happy," Blaine replied, suddenly distracted.

Quinn had seen the way Blaine would often stare at Kurt during class. Kurt was in their Spanish class, while Karofsky had another end-of-the-day study hall. So Blaine was free to pine after Kurt in his last class, thinking no one noticed. But Quinn did. She also noticed that Blaine seemed distracted with Karofsky, even when Kurt wasn't around. And Karofsky seemed distracted too. In the beginning they had been fine, but as the days progressed, they became distant from each other.

"I… I don't think so," Quinn replied, putting her hands in her pockets. Blaine had given her his jacket to wear on the walk over, as it was crisp, and Blaine was wearing more layers than Quinn was.

Blaine looked at her, "What do you mean?" he said, his eyes narrowing.

"I see… I see." She said firmly, locking eyes with the curly-haired dork. "I know you like Cho Chang, Harry… but you two are actually just friends. You actually pine for Ginny Weasley… and rumor has it, the author has spoken that you two are meant to be…" Quinn replied, smiling coyly.

Blaine blinked. He was about to reply, but the drinks were done, and he was being a gentlemen. So he grabbed the drinks, grabbed a table, and when Quinn sat down, he whispered, "You are wise beyond your years, Hermione Granger."

"And I thought you were going to go into denial," Quinn replied as Blaine passed her her drink.

Blaine shrugged his shoulder, making his ear nearly touch it as he crooked his head quickly. He looked up at the ceiling before his eyes flicked back to Quinn's face, "I was going to. I had this whole plan, really, to defend Karofsky's honor that he was a sweet boy who I'm in love with. But then the lady handed me our drinks and I decided to rethink my speech. He's a sweet boy and I like him. I like him enough not to end things with him, though, because I still have  _no_  chance with Ginny Weasley right now, because she's the most brilliant witch, next to yourself, of course, and I'm just… Just the Boy Who Lived…"

Quinn sighed, happy they were using this metaphor, as it was easier to talk through Harry Potter references. "But Harry… you're the  _Boy Who Lived_. You are destined to meet with You-Know-Who and defeat him again! I saw it in my crystal ball! Besides, I'm sure Ron won't mind that his sister is dating his best friend. You'll be brothers-in-law soon enough anyway…"

Blaine laughed, "I'm not worried about Ron. I'm worried about Cho. She hasn't met Cedric yet, and I want to be a good first boyfriend so she can be ready."

"Thestral shit, Harry," Quinn replied, smiling. "You've got to get over your fear of getting rejected by Ginny. You'd be happier with her, and I'm sure… I'm sure Cho wouldn't take it as bad if you broke up with her… She… she likes Ginny too… and I'm sure she knows that if you love something… to let it go. And that if it's truly meant to be yours, it'll return. And if it doesn't…  _to move on_."

Blaine sighed and as he breathed out, slumped back in his seat. "Dumby was wrong, Hermione Granger. You're the most brilliant witch of your age, and you are  _not_  a dumbass…"

Quinn smiled, "Would a Red Vine make you feel better?" she asked, taking one out of her (Blaine's) jacket pocket.

Blaine chuckled, leaned forward, and grabbed the licorice wand from her hand. As he bit into it, he leaned back in his chair, looked out the window, and thought  _But can I actually do it?_

***

"At least it wasn't a  _Spiderman_  reference like in  _A Very Potter Musical_  and  _A Very Potter Sequel_ ," Rachel said, sprawled out on her bed. "But were you telling the truth? Does Karofsky know to let things go and see if they were truly yours by whether they come back or stay away?"

"He's known it all the years he's pined for Kurt, that's for sure," Quinn replied. "Why are we talking in the dark?" she suddenly asked, for, yes, all the lights were out and the blinds were down.

"I'm testing the glow. I don't usually keep spirits around, but we can probably trundle down to the school later this evening," Rachel replied. "We've got to get Karofsky and Blaine to break up though."

Quinn blinked, "What?" she asked, and her skinned glowed furiously in the dark.

"There we go," Rachel replied, "Emotional response. Grant it, that was unintentional for me to make you do that… but at least now we know…"

"Would you turn on the lights and stop talking about my freaky glowing for a minute?" Quinn asked, "My best friend and your best friend are having a crisis, and it needs to be fixed because they're both stubborn little freaks!"

Rachel sighed and opened the blinds, her hands gravitating to her hips, "Be that as it may, there is nothing we can do. Karofsky can get a little mean, and Kurt can't be distracted by boys right now…"

"What? The happiness of an individual is sacrificed because of the potential of a  _minor_  temper tantrum and a bunch of spirits?"

Rachel thought about it. "Well… the spirits are getting out and most of them have bad motives…"

Quinn raised her eyebrow, standing slowly.

Rachel gulped hard, "You're right. I do want Kurt back to normal. There's still that bone-snatcher at large and he hasn't seemed to be caring the last few days…" she replied.

And Quinn simply gave her a smile before shutting the blinds again and sitting down on the bed, a content glow coming from her.

***

Karofsky was quite surprised when Quinn came bouncing up to him after football practice. Before she started talking, though, he noticed Rachel Berry was coming up from her spot watching the team in the football stadium's stands. He also noticed that Blaine's practice had ended early, so he was already in the showers.

"What is it, Fabray?" he asked, as Rachel picked up the pace to catch up to them.

"It's Kurt," Quinn said. "Haven't you noticed how sad he is? I know he always had that monotone look about him, but he's been… monotonously moping around a lot…"

Rachel had caught up to them and had heard the snippet. Karofsky was about to go in to the lockers, but was reminded (and now intrigued by what they had to say) that the girls were… well…  _girls_. He stopped walking and got out of the way of some other players who were itching to shower and go home.

"I've noticed that. What have you guys been up to that's got him so down?" he asked.

"Not our fault," Rachel replied, seeing that the brute had nodded towards her. "It's Blaine…"

"Am I monopolizing too much of his time? I mean… I could cut back a bit if the safety of the school is at large…"

"You could cut back a lot, Karofsky," Quinn said, folding her arms over her chest. "And not  _just_  for the safety of the school. Kurt has a bit of a crush on young Anderson, and though he hardly shows it, Rach and I know he does. You and Blaine being together, however, has got the dear head detective moping."

"And if he keeps moping, the whole operation will shut down, and the Rift will go unguarded from the outside," Rachel replied, "Must I remind you why your sister is in a wheel chair being cared for at a mental home?"

Karofsky glared at the short, poorly dressed psychic but resisted the urge to slap her across her pretty face. "Yes…" he replied, the hostility levels high in his voice, "But Blaine and I are  _happy_  together…"

Quinn sighed, "I don't think so."

Karofsky turned to her and got in her face a little bit, "What did you say."

Quinn smirked and held her head up high, not scared of a little face-to-face intimidation. "I said, I don't think so."

Karofsky was taken aback. So much so he stepped back.

Quinn grinned, "You're distracted from each other. Blaine pines for Kurt when you're not around, and I think you could care less. He's the only other gay boy you know, Karofsky, who isn't so brilliant and so  _totally_  far out of your league," her tone softened a little then, "And… and I know you want to see them both happy. Remember when Kurt smiled at the beginning of the school year in our morning English class?" she was watching Karofsky's face as she spoke, which suddenly had a far-away look to his eyes, and a soft smile began to grow on his lips as he remembered, "He realized Blaine was in the room. That tiny smile lip up his eyes when he saw Rachel, but it grew into a  _real_  smile when he noticed Blaine was there too…"

Karofsky blinked back to reality, "And the only way to have that happen again is… for Blaine to be freed up again?"

"Kurt just wants the chance," Rachel replied, "The thought that maybe, just maybe, Blaine could be his if he could only get up the guts to ask him to be. And with you and Blaine as an item… that's just not going to happen. It's eating at Kurt, and that's why he's unhappy…"

Quinn saw the indecision in Karofsky's face and sighed. "Think about it, Karofsky. Just… think about it. Take a few days, go out with him a couple more times, and see how you feel about the whole thing. Then remind yourself of Kurt and watch him as well…"

She spun on her heel to leave, and Rachel was left alone for a mere three seconds before she followed, grabbing Quinn's arm and hissing, "Why are we just leaving him like that?"

"He's got a thicker head than us. Think AVPM Cho Chang rather than the original Cho Chang. Southern Belle versus Asian Smart-Ass," Quinn hissed back. "Let him stew over what we said for a couple days. He'll come around, and hopefully Kurt will be around to see it or catch wind of it."

***

He wasn't. On the most influential day of Quinn and Rachel's life, Kurt had stayed home due to a little heartache.

Karofsky had stewed over what the girls had said for days now. They had approached him Wednesday, and it was now Friday afternoon, and Karofsky had to do it. He had watched Blaine's eyes as they went from watching Karofsky as he spoke to him to watching Kurt walk past them to his locker. Then he had noticed Kurt's hurt stares at them whenever Blaine chose Karofsky to eat with yet again.

He felt stupid and selfish after that, and so on Friday, he resolved to end things with Blaine. If it hurt the other boy, so be it. Rachel and Quinn would probably suck him up afterwards and make him go see Kurt. Kurt deserved him more than Karofsky did anyway. Karofsky often wondered what a guy like Blaine was doing with a guy like himself. Karofsky had only seen the  _Harry Potter_  movies, and hadn't read the books. The most he could get into conversation about was football, and only a little soccer (Dave didn't understand a lick of soccer besides David Beckham and the fact that the goalie kept balls out of the net). Blaine was the cute sort of dork, and the fact that he was a psychic as well made him the top of the heap at McKinley. Karofsky was second best at most.

"Blaine," Karofsky said sternly when third period had ended and Blaine was waiting for him outside his third period Spanish class. "We need to talk."

"If you're bailing on me for tonight, then I think I'll be a little disappointed," Blaine replied.

Karofsky took him off to the side, in between one row of lockers and the next. "Look… I think you and I know that this…  _relationship_  is a mistake," Karofsky said, putting a hand on Blaine's shoulder.

Blaine blinked, "What's gotten into you, Dave?" he asked.

"I just… don't think I can do this anymore. I've got to focus on some other things. I want to get a football scholarship so I can get my sister into a better mental hospital," Karofsky replied, "And I've kind of been telling myself I need to start going to see her since Mom died and Dad's a deadbeat…" he said, resolving to actually follow through with this plan (it was a good plan, even though he had initially been lying). "Besides… wasn't there something Quinn told you? 'Bros before hos, work before pleasure?'"

Blaine blinked, and then smiled, "Yeah. I think us breaking up is a good idea. Not only so you can see your sister. But… can we at least go back to that time when things didn't get weird between us?"

"I'll meet you half-way, bro," Karofsky replied, "Nothing like this ever happened between us… and I'll leave you and your friends alone."

"Thanks," Blaine said. He paused, putting his arms over his stomach before he kissed Karofsky's cheek, and then totally disappeared.

***

Blaine found Rachel alone in the cafeteria, "Where's Kurt?" he asked.

"Where's Karofsky?" Rachel shot back.

"Lifting weights. We decided to break-up, so I think he's staying away until we get into our natural rhythms again…" Blaine replied like it was no big deal.

Rachel's mouth opened into a small 'o,' and she suddenly ducked her head down to send a quick text. Blaine took this opportunity to take one of her chips before he set his own plate (the cafeteria was serving sandwiches Subway style, and chips were a must at the end of each 'order') and began fiddling with the gross-looking pickle that dared try to touch Blaine's precious sandwich. "Now tell me where Kurt is, woman."

"At home," Rachel replied, ignoring the buzz of her phone as the person she had just texted replied. "He says he's sick and he won't be coming. So I had to cancel something with a client of mine so I could bring him coffee and his homework. And he'll only take coffee if it's from one spot—"

Blaine cut her off, "I can bring him his homework. You can drive across town to the Lima Bean and get us all coffee, and I'll break down his defenses and get him all better so we can finally catch this bone-snatcher."

He saw the look Rachel was giving him and shrugged, "I know you guys haven't done anything about that thing because  _you_  still have the cloak, and you guys need  _me_  to figure out what the hell this thing is doing and why can't we do anything to stop it."

Rachel smiled and put out her hand, "Welcome back to the team, Mr. Anderson."

"Don't call me that. Tonight I'm Neo…" Blaine replied, scoffing lightly and putting his hand up.

Rachel paused, then giggled, "Be glad we're not actually in  _The Matrix_ , because I think I wouldn't be the white rabbit."

Blaine grinned, took her hand, shook it, and continued munching on his less-than-fabulous roast beef sandwich.

***

"Shrek… Shrek, I don't like playing these little games…" Blaine said, imitating Eddie Murphy almost to a tee.

"Blaine?" Kurt asked, sitting up on his bed. He got up, looked down at his half-naked body and pointed, "I'm not wearing pants, am I?"

"Yeah," Blaine replied, Luna curled up in his arms and piece of paper with Kurt's Friday assignments curled around her tail and tied with a red ribbon, "The ducks are cute. Now at least put a robe on or I'll be forced to undress as well to keep you company…" he showed Kurt the cat, "…and we have a lady here."

Kurt sighed and grabbed his robe, "Where's Rachel?"

"Getting us all coffee."

"Where's Karofsky?" Kurt asked.

Blaine checked his watch, causing his half-grown cat to meow loudly, "Hush, Looney. Check for Nargles like a good girl, all right? Karofsky is at football practice, and before you ask, there's no practice tonight for me, so I came here with your homework, and a cat. Because studies show that handling animals relaxes people, and you're stress-levels are what are causing this sickness of yours," he grinned at Kurt as Kurt tied the sash of his robe, "So that begs the question: would you like to pet my pussy?" he asked, holding out the cat like Rafiki held Simba and Simba's daughter in  _The Lion King_.

Kurt laughed, "That would be so much more funny if you were a girl saying that…"

"Oh, but I think my male gender just makes it funnier, don't you think?" Blaine asked, "Now take Luna or all the blood will go to her feet and she'll start complaining."

Kurt sighed and took the cat, cradling it close to his chest. She meowed anyway. "Oh stop, Luna. You look lovely," he cooed, putting his face in her fur, "How come I've never met this pretty kitty before?"

"She was hiding from the big mean Angels when you first came over… and that was the last real time you guys came to hang out at my place so… you missed her whole kittenhood…" Blaine said, smiling fondly as he came over and rubbed Luna's ear between his first finger and thumb, "I remember it like it was yesterday… they grow up so fast…" he said, pretending to cry. "My little baby…"

He took the piece of paper from her tail and put it on the desk, "We got a lot of English homework today. Rachel says Mrs. Jewels was on her period or something, 'cause she was pissy. Anyway, to punish the whole class for one thing Santana said, she gave us three opinion essays to work on, each from the opinion of three of the characters from _Romeo and Juliet_. I was thinking the Nurse, Mercutio, and Benvolio might be fun to write for myself…" he said, turning back to Kurt, who had sunk down on his bed, scratching Luna behind the ear and cooing.

He looked up, "Awesome. You would think Romeo, Juliet, and one other character would suffice, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I like getting into the minds of minor characters. You should see the fanfiction works I've done for minor  _Doctor Who_  characters like Jeremy Banes, who turned into Son-of-Mine in 'Human Nature?' I think my work with the Carrionites from 'The Shakespeare Code' were my favorite pieces…" Blaine mused.

Kurt laughed, "Gaga, I've missed you, Blaine Anderson…"

"Missed me," Blaine asked, pointing to himself.

Kurt blushed, "I mean…" he hid his face behind the cat, "I've missed the certain… dorkiness you bring to the group dynamic. I mean, you've got me watching both  _Doctor Who_  and  _A Very Potter Musical_  and it's sequel, and you have Rachel rereading the  _Harry Potter_ books from the very beginning, and then using references from both Starkid's version and Ms. Rowling's," he said when his head returned from Luna's fur.

Blaine crossed his arms over his chest and smirked, "Whatever you say, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel…"

"Am I interrupting anything?" Rachel asked from the doorway, a drink tray in her hands with three Styrofoam cups.

"Not at all. Kurt was telling me how much you guys missed me," Blaine replied as she gave him a one armed hug, put down the drink tray, and then gave both Luna and Kurt a two-armed hug.

"When did your dad let you have a cat?" Rachel asked.

"That's  _my_  pussy," Blaine replied, taking Luna gently from Kurt, "Luna's been a constant companion since day one here in Lima…" he cooed. Then he turned to Kurt, "You don't mind if Luna roams the grounds, do you? She's connected to me in her little kitty way, so she'll come back when she's done… and she's trained to dig holes in the dirt, do her business and then bury it," he said, going to the window.

Kurt nodded, "I want her to come back, though. Those studies were right… I felt relaxed with that girl…"

Blaine nodded, "I'll put a word in for you, Kurtie," he replied, opening the latch and letting Luna through. "Come on back when you're done, pretty kitty. Do the little scratchy thing and meow if you can't get anyone's attention to let you in…"

But Luna was all ready moving fast to the backyard to explore, and so Blaine chuckled to himself and closed the window, as it was a little chilly outside.

"All right… did you bring the cloak?" he asked, right as Kurt held it up for him.

"Rachel gave it to me just in case you came back around from your little Karofsky high…"

"Karofsky and I broke up today, okay? My 'little Karofsky high' is over, and it won't be coming back, because withdrawal and I are on good terms," Blaine replied, taking the cloak, sniffing it, and putting it around his shoulders dramatically.

Rachel slumped down on the bed as Blaine went into his little trance, and put her arm around Kurt, "You missed it. We ate lunch together, Karofsky came in to the cafeteria for about a minute, they did the little 'What up' nod to each other, and Blaine went back to telling me about his sister's second-to-last liver check-up," Rachel said, sighing contentedly. "He's back."

Kurt looked at Blaine, who's eyes were squeezed shut and he was sweating lightly. He stood, and took the cloak gently from the other boy's shoulders. Blaine fell to the floor, "Holy crap…" he breathed, "that's intense."

"What?" Kurt asked.

"This spirit found some voodoo books by haunting the McKinley library. She found a genuine spell that calls for bones. The spell binds the bones together to make a skeleton, and then the second part fills in the missing parts, creating a body. This spirit is making a body out of bones from the graveyard… It's female, by the way, and being in a female's memories is really weird, but it feels bloody  _great._ "

Kurt sighed, a slight grin on his face, "You're so gay," he said, flicking him on the ear before helping Blaine up on his feet.

Blaine grinned back, "Look who's talking…"

Rachel stood up suddenly, "So we've been going at it all wrong. This is a simple exorcism, not just a spirit just  _I_  can handle alone…"

Kurt looked at the clock, "Let me get dressed, let's go out and get something to eat, and let's book it to the graveyard," he said. "Fight over what we get for dinner… I'll be in the bathroom getting ready…"

Blaine sighed as Kurt disappeared and looked to the window, where Luna was scratching at the window and meowing. He opened the door, scooped her up, closed the door, and turned to Rachel, "Bring the coffees. We're going out for Mexican. And before you ask, yes, the place in my mind has vegan dishes through the roof."

Rachel smiled, picking up the tray, "I trust you like I trust the clocks at hospitals."

***

Quinn was in awe when she went to the graveyard again.

She had gone, hoping that tonight would be another paranormal-free night, but since Karofsky and Blaine weren't dating anymore, no such luck. But what stopped Quinn from running back home right away was what was going on.

 _They had caught the spirit_  somehow. Kurt had his eyes closed, and Rachel was singing again, but this time, Quinn watched with amazement as Rachel's song split the spirit from the bones (which clattered to the ground), and as she led the spirit toward the high school. Kurt opened his eyes, looked at the bones, and threw them in a collective hole, covering them with dirt. He then took off along-side Blaine toward the school, a ring of keys in his hands.

Quinn watched until they disappeared from her sight. "Man, their job is so cool," she said, kicking the ground a little before turning heel to go home.


	7. Here There Be Dragons

Blaine had had a wonderful dream involving a blue box and a bunch of Weeping Angels under an 'Imperius Curse.' And something about a sonic-screwdriver that doubled as a wand. But as he woke to his alarm clock, he noticed something blue and scaley, and knew that Luna hadn't slept right in the crook of his stomach that night.

"Holy crap… that's no lizard," Blaine said as he gazed at the creature.

Quite literally, it was a blue baby dragon with a yellow underbelly. It was a darling creature, nothing like the medieval stories. He could hold it in his arms like a kitten and it actually  _purred_  against him. A psychic voice even whispered, 'Mommy!'

_Wait… mommy?_

***

"…And… the two of Cups. Looks like you got romance in your future, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel!" Rachel cooed, looking over the simple Tarot reading. "The Moon in your past, for all the spiritual/psychic crap the world put you through, a nasty Three of Swords moment of emotional draining and arguments, and finally, if you keep going at it like this, you get your committed relationship."

"Wow… you got the opposition of the Lovers in your present, though," Kurt pointed out, blushing at the implications of his simple Tarot reading.

"That… doesn't mean anything," Rachel replied, glancing over at the jocks, mainly at Quinn, who was flipping through her History notes for a test.

Suddenly Blaine was next to them, still with a lump in his lap. He hadn't been in their English period, but had come late at the end to turn in something, and then he was gone again. Kurt looked in his lap, as Blaine sat right next to him.

"What have you got there, Anderson?" Kurt asked.

Blaine looked around, and finally revealed the baby dragon, "I woke up with this thing purring against me. It thinks I'm its mommy."

"One, that is a male dragon, and two… this is an astral inner guardian to the Rift," Kurt said, and Rachel moved from the opposite side of the table to where Kurt and Blaine were sitting and leaned over the baby dragon.

"Aww… of course it thinks your mommy, Blaine. Dragons adopt the hatchlings in groups of two, but the norm for dragons is homosexual coupling."

Blaine looked up at the brunette, "What?"

"Dragons are chiefly homosexual, though heterosexual couples happen too. Babies are trained not to see 'mommy' as a girl nor to see 'daddy' as a boy. Because even in heterosexual couplings, mommy can be the boy and daddy can be the girl…" Kurt explained. "But usually, two males or two females adopt the hatchlings…"

"How the hell did this baby dragon come to find me?" Blaine asked, getting flustered now that the dragon was fisting his shirt and whispering 'Mommy' again in its strange psychic talking  _whatever_. "What is it, little one?"

Kurt smiled at how cute Blaine was with the child, "Sadly, this little one must have climbed out and run off. Psychics have the same spiritual energy as the spirits in the Rift, and you live closer to the school so… he chose you to live with. But we have to get him back to his real parents…"

Blaine blinked, watching as the baby dragon opened its fabulously green eyes and stared up at Blaine, and then Kurt. A tiny dragon smile formed on his lips and he said, stretching out his hand to Kurt, 'Daddy!'

Rachel covered her mouth and giggled, "What a wonderful little family…" she cooed, watching Kurt's face turn a wonderful red color. "You do realize this little guy's gonna remember you two as its human parents even if we  _do_  find his real parents?"

"Lovely… we're not even a couple," Blaine replied. "So… are we going to just get all the dragons out here and see which ones recognize the baby?"

"Nope," Kurt replied, deciding to ignore the quip about Blaine and him not being a couple. It was true for the most part. "We're going  _in_  to the Rift through the ground opening our old friend Alexander Chiffon opened for us. Ever wonder how Rachel gets in when those violent spirits need to be lead all the way in?"

Blaine blinked, "Isn't that a little dangerous?"

"If you stay in there too long, it gets dangerous, because there's a chance you can be contaminated, shrivel up and die yourself," Kurt replied, "But it shouldn't take us long to find this little guy's parents. Someone's bound to recognize him…"

"And the dragons are the only spiritual beings in the Rift that won't go under my song, so… it'll be tough to get all the dragons around us… They'll gather around other psychics with gathering powers, just not the vocal ones," Rachel added absentmindedly. "We'll have to go to each one and ask, and they guard the inner Rift, and that goes all over the world."

"You forget that to traverse the Spirit World it only takes about one minute to go a hundred miles…" Kurt put in.

Blaine looked down at the dragon, "Guys, whatever it takes. I can't take care of an astral dragon… Even if my parents will never see it, this guy belongs in the Rift."

"Then we'll take it back at the end of the school day," Kurt said, "You don't have practice tonight, right?"

Blaine nodded, and let the little toothless baby dragon suck his pinkie.

***

"He's so cute, though," Quinn said to Blaine in his and her Chemistry class. Thank goodness the class was only expected to have a study session in their lab groups, and Quinn had chosen Blaine as her partner the first day of class.

"I know. But he belongs back in the Rift, and that's what Kurt, Rach and I are doing this afternoon," Blaine replied.

"So… dragon couples are mostly homosexual, and he's adopted you and Kurt as his parents?" Quinn asked, chuckling lightly.

"Shut up," Blaine replied, rolling his eyes.

Quinn laughed and patted the dragon's head, "What does the little guy eat?" she asked.

"Rachel told me baby dragons literally feed on spiritual energy, but since all things, living and dead, are constantly absorbing the nutrients from the air, that feeds  _their_  spirit as well. Kurt said something about baby dragons feeding off the continuous loving bond between his or her parents, but at that point, the bell was ringing and I had to get to Math," Blaine replied.

Quinn's eyebrows shot up, but Blaine didn't seem to have even thought about what he had just said as he checked over the baby dragon to see if it was still alive. "So baby dragons actually need loving parents to live?"

"Yeah… and that's why we have to find its actual parents, because Kurt and I are not exactly loving… We get into more arguments than we do anything else," Blaine replied, deeming the baby 'clean, healthy, and definitely still alive.'

Quinn sighed, "What if… what if he had  _just hatched_  when he found you?" she asked.

Blaine looked at her, "It's a possibility. But I'm hoping he has a set of parents that, for one, look more like him. I'm in high school, Quinn. I can't raise a baby dragon. For one… I couldn't give him the extra shot of a loving connection with my chosen partner. My last loving relationship wasn't exactly loving, and it was ended because my chosen partner decided to change his habits…"

Quinn nodded, "I know you can't… keep him. Mostly because of school. But you can take care of him. I've see you care for your sister and… and  _me_. Luna has grown in to a gorgeous, sweet cat because of you as well," she replied. "And… And what about Ginny? She's all ready the baby boy's daddy so…"

"No. I don't even think Kurt likes me like that. Why would he? He's a natural born psychic, and I only Awakened this past Spring…" Blaine replied, his eyes darkening. The baby shifted in Blaine's arms, looking up at him with those green eyes. He clambered up 'mommy's' chest and cuddled into Blaine's neck, licking his ear fondly. Blaine laughed, "It's all right, baby boy… Daddy and I are in that awkward stage where mommy has a crush on daddy but daddy is a big-time high school ghost-buster and deserves someone better than mommy can be…"

"That was the weirdest sentence said to a child in the history of parental excuses," Quinn replied, chuckling.

Blaine was getting up, though. It was the middle of class, but he told Quinn if Ms. Dasani looked up from her work and asked about him, that he was running an errand for Kurt.

***

Kurt had skipped his AP Calculus class several times since the beginning of school four or five weeks ago (Kurt never actually paid any attention to time. Time and space were nothing in the Spirit World. He had watched several dragons grow up from a hatchling to a teenager in only a month or two his time. The baby dragon which had adopted him as 'daddy' would soon be that way as well. Kurt wondered, for a second, if that was how  _his own_  father thought of him when they sat across from each other at dinner (which was getting more and more frequent, thank you very much)). He was skipping his AP Calculus class again to check the actual opening to the Rift again. It had been a few months, actually, and he was worried that it might have closed up. (But the wibbly-wobbly blue-white rip was still above his head. He was just checking the start of the rip, which was lower to the ground, and Rachel and him could actually climb through without climbing any walls.) The beginning was where it always was.

It was near the choir room, on the way to the auditorium, in between some lockers that were never used. In fact, the one that Rachel often frequented to get into the Rift was near the edge, numbered 113. Spooky for some, but slightly ambiguous for Kurt.

He opened the locker and peered in. It was like looking into a pool of clear water, but he was gazing into another world. A face appeared: one of a wise looking yellow dragon. "Hello again, Master Hummel."

"Please, Theta. Don't call me that. We have a situation, and I think two more with be joining me. Rachel and the new boy."

"I would be honored, sir," Theta told him. "I see you are adding more of your kind to the ranks?"

"Yes," Kurt replied. "Are you missing any hatchlings from any of the nests?" he asked.

"… I'll have Morgan and Chester check, Master Hummel—I mean, Kurt."

"Thank you, Theta. I'll see you soon. Probably in a month or two your time," Kurt told the aging dragon, a small smile on his face before he closed the locker door.

To anyone who didn't know Kurt very much, talking to an empty locker would definitely be strange. Blaine Anderson was the only one not used to Kurt's strangeness. But standing at the end of the hall with a baby dragon curled in his arms, he was able to follow the blue-white Rift and figure out that the seasoned psychic had been talking to someone on the Other Side.

"Kurt."

Kurt spun around, "Last class?"

"Chemistry. Quinn understands, and Ms. Dasani probably knows by now that I'm with you…" Blaine replied quickly.

"Rachel said she didn't have choir today, but I don't know where she is…"

"Getting coffee," another voice chipped in.

Rachel was at the end of the hall, another tray of coffees in her hand. Blaine seemed to be the only one on the opposite end of the hall that noticed  _there were four coffees instead of three_. Rachel waved the two boys away from the Rift's opening. "Come on. I think its time we found a nice empty classroom and had a quick talk."

***

Blaine grinned when they got in the empty Spanish room. Quinn had slipped out of class as well, apparently, and was just setting her phone down on the table when the other three entered. "What is Fabray doing here?" Kurt asked, his diva face coming on.

Blaine chuckled and found Quinn's drink on the tray, taking his own and hers to her and sitting next to her. "You haven't heard? Quinny here's got the psychic glow," he said, putting a free arm around her. The baby dragon was clambering onto the table. Blaine finally helped the little guy up as Kurt digested the thought.

"Why didn't she come to me?" Kurt asked.

"Same reason Blaine didn't, Kurt. You can be a bit overbearing, and a lot of people just want to keep their gifts secret from you until they can control it," Rachel replied, handing him his drink before sitting down across from Quinn. "It doesn't matter now, she wants in…"

Kurt sat down and studied Quinn, "How long have you known?"

"Three years now?" Quinn asked, "It's been coming and going, though, which is why I didn't come to either of you. I told Blaine in secret last spring, and he came out to me about his ability."

Kurt glared at Blaine, but Blaine was watching his 'son' walk about the table. Finally, the baby dragon was near Kurt, and was pawing at him, his psychic voice mewling out, 'Daddy!'

"Not now, you," Kurt said, glancing at the boy dragon before turning back to Quinn.

"Take care of your son," Blaine said, putting his cup back on the table silently. He was seething, however.

Kurt turned to him, "What?"

"Give the boy what he wants," Blaine said, gesturing to the baby dragon still pawing at Kurt's arm. "He hasn't done anything to you but love you."

Kurt blinked. He turned to the little dragon, and, as he would a small cat or dog, picked him up and cuddled him close, cooing a little. He turned back to Quinn after a moment, his face now softened, "Fine. So you have a gift. Why come to us now?"

"I want to join you guys. I want to… to help keep this world safe," Quinn replied. "Since the dragons are doing such a fine job not letting spirits out."

"Not their fault," Kurt replied, again seething. "Some spirits are just clever."

Blaine sighed and stood, "Stop it, you two. We have to get this baby back in the Rift anyway. It would be a good initiation as any to the group. Better than mine, anyway."

"Why, what happened to you?" Quinn asked, standing as well.

"My first mission, as a  _bona fide_  team member, was to somehow sexually attract a spirit who had died thanks to poisoned aphrodisiac. A  _lady_  spirit," Blaine replied. "I had to take my shirt off in front of her and everything."

"Poor you. Are there no homosexual spirits floating around in the Rift?" Quinn asked.

"There are bisexual ghosts and homosexual ghosts as well as heterosexual ghosts. When the ghosts were living, however, they probably were expected to be heterosexual," Rachel replied darkly, standing up herself.

Blaine went to Kurt, who was just standing as well, and they stood over the baby dragon together a parents usually did, smiling and cuddling the little cutie. Rachel picked up the empty cups and threw them away. Quinn simply watched the two, fascinated that the two were the only ones who didn't see the loving bond between them.

"That baby's getting some weird loving energy between his parents," Quinn said to no one in particular.

"That baby's smart, is what it is," Rachel replied, smiling. "It saw the romantic bond between Blaine and Kurt, and that's why Kurt is his daddy."

"We best be going," Kurt said, handing the baby over to Blaine suddenly and grabbing his coat, "No telling what not having the key nutrient of love can do to the little one."

Rachel and Quinn rolled their eyes at each other, but followed after him and Blaine to locker 113.

***

The entrance into the Rift was a little like walking through a shower. It felt wet and warm to the touch, but once they were through, everything was dry and normal. Except for all the blue-white sky and trees and a castle in the very distance.

An old, wise-looking yellow dragooned welcomed them, sniffing at each as they got through the entrance. Kurt was the last in, and he trusted the dragons to look after the open portal. Theta checked the baby, "No… no one at this entrance has seen a baby like this guy. I'd check the nests, though…"

Kurt nodded and went to lead the other three down the Rifts opening when Theta put and clawed hand on his shoulder, "The baby won't forget you. It'll always think of you has its real parents," he said, looking from Kurt to Blaine.

"We're only kids in our world, Theta," Kurt replied, back to the older dragon fellow, "Taking care of a littler kid would take our childhoods away even more."

Quinn and Blaine looked at each other, then at Kurt again. Their look said,  _he's already lost most if not all of his childhood_.

But the old dragon didn't push it, "All right. I doubt you will find his parents, my dear boy. The best we can do is find a nurse maid to find a set of parents for him while you two are… becoming adults in your world…"

Kurt finally turned back to Blaine, who glanced down at the baby dragon boy in his arms. Blaine was suddenly embarrassed, but it showed as anger in his eyes. Quinn gave him a one-armed hug as Theta lead them to a place that reminded her eerily of a nursery, only their were unhatched eggs all over the place, and few that were hatched out of all ready, the babies cooing cutely. A silvery-purple dragon came up to them. "I'm Andulata. I'm the nursemaid to this particular nest."

"Kurt Hummel… and this is Blaine Anderson. We found this little guy in our world this morning…"

Andulata studied the baby and sighed, "I'm afraid he's all ready attached to you two as its parents."

"We're… we're too young to take care of a baby," Blaine said.

Andulata thought about this for a moment. "Well… I can give him to a pair willing to take care of him  _in the meantime_ ," she stated firmly, one of her fabulous shimmering wings (another pair of claws was attached to this one's wings) scratching her back. "But it will always—"

"—remember us as its parents," Blaine finished. "I know. I'm aware. When he's old enough, he can visit us anytime he wants. And when I'm old enough to be a parent, he can come live with me."

Kurt elbowed him, "He'd only come live with you if you and I lived together and had some sort of partnership…"

"Like… business partnership?" Blaine asked a bit dumbly.

Kurt sighed, "No… A… a  _romantic_  partnership."

Blaine blushed, "I really wish dragons could forget," he murmured. Only his 'son' seemed to hear him, and he made a small, loving hiss at his 'mommy.'

Andulata looked between the two boys, "We will allow the boy to visit, but their will be complications in him finding you if you two are not together as a romantic couple…"

"Well… then he'll just have to miss us," Kurt replied.

Blaine glared at him, but he handed the baby over to the nursemaid without another word. "Fine," he finally said, and went to storm off out of the Rift's opening. Andulata's voice stopped him.

"As a last act, Mr. Anderson. At least give the boy a name…" she said.

Blaine turned to the dragon holding his 'son.' Then he turned to Kurt and grumbled, "You do it. I've been nurturing the boy since this morning, so at least pull your weight before you don't even have to worry about the boy anymore…" he grumbled.

Kurt looked hurt and bit taken aback.  _Damn, I'm really bad with people I have feelings for_, he thought, biting his lower lip. He looked to the dragon nursemaid and said, "Jeremy. After the boy who's watch Awakened this little guy's… mommy," he said nervously, running a hand over his perfectly gelled hair.

"And surname? Will he be taking yours, Mr. Hummel?" Andulata asked.

"No," Kurt replied, gaining confidence again. "Anderson-Hummel."

"Anderson… hyphen… Hummel?" Andulata asked, and Kurt noticed the tiny, slug-like dragon taking notes on a pad of paper with a quill. He was sitting on a rock, writing down the name of Kurt and Blaine's draconian baby's name.

Kurt nodded, "Yes."

Andulata looked over her assistant's notes and nodded, "Then you're all set."

"Thank you," Blaine said through clenched teeth, and went to leave. Kurt was right behind him.

Andulata turned to the girls, "I hope, for Jeremy Anderson-Hummel's sake, that those two get sorted out…"

Quinn and Rachel looked at each other, then at the draconian nursemaid and said, in harmony, "We're working on it."


	8. Too Much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Used: "(Hit Me Baby) One More Time" by Britney Spears.

"I quit."

Kurt and Rachel looked surprised for only a minute.

"You're a pain in my behind, Kurt Hummel and I want my old life, the one without you in it, back," Blaine continued, still as calm as he was before. Quinn was behind him, ready to back him up if needed. She had thought that maybe, with the naming of the baby yesterday, putting Anderson in front of Hummel, as well as naming it after someone who had tied Kurt and Blaine together like this would make things better between Kurt and Blaine, but obviously it hadn't. And Quinn was Blaine's best friend, and it had always been 'bros before hos' between them.

"All right," Kurt replied, in a monotonous voice. He and Rachel went back to pouring over what looked like poetry for their English class.

Blaine and Quinn looked to each other, clearly expecting Kurt and Rachel to plead with them to stay. When they didn't, Blaine made a rather girlish scoffing noise and walked off, Quinn following him. She took one glance back at the table. Rachel looked up, gave her a sad little shrug, and looked back down at the poetry book she and Kurt were pouring over.

***

"Right as there was something paranormally about those damned speaker systems," Blaine said, slamming his fist on the table.

"You've been noticing it too?" Quinn asked. "Or did Mr. Galante ask you about them?"

Blaine glanced at her, "Was I the only one who noticed the blue-green aura coming from the speaker systems when I came in to your gym class to pick up the attendance slips?"

"I think this school is just becoming desensitized toward all the 'paranormally stuff,'" Quinn replied, utilizing her air quotes.

"Be that as it may, I don't think we have to worry about it anymore," Blaine replied, digging into what was supposed to be macaroni and cheese, but Blaine swore it was alive and probably wanted to kill him. Just like a scene out the old  _Calvin and Hobbes_  comics.

Quinn sighed, "I was only part of that team for a day…"

"And yet you saw the inside of the Spirit World. I think my first real day as one of  _them_  was the most embarrassing day of my life," Blaine replied. "Good riddance."

Quinn could  _feel_  her friend seething, and she wasn't even an Empath. She rubbed his back, "Something the matter?"

"He didn't—" Blaine paused, calming himself down a little, as he  _was_  a little tense, and it showed through his voice (and his hand, as he stabbed the Macaroni Monster a little too hard—Blaine would swear later the yellow mass probably deserved it), "He didn't even look at me when I told him I was leaving."

Quinn saw him slump a little in his shoulders, and then turned to the table where Rachel and Kurt were sitting, heads together and whispering fervently. Perhaps they had a new case. "After practice, I think an intervention is needed. I've got  _The Emperor's New Groove_ , and I'm buying us  _both_  a pint of ice cream. Still like strawberry?" she asked.

Blaine looked at her, "You don't have to do that…"

"Then I won't," Quinn replied, taking her arm back.

Blaine stopped her by grabbing her skinny fingers to add a little weight to bring her arm back over his shoulder. He laughed lightly, "You know what I mean…"

Quinn smiled at her friend, "You're heartbroken, I'm tired of it, let's at least take your mind of it for a little while, mmkay?"

"Okay," Blaine replied, looking back down at his food. "Does this remind you of something out of  _Calvin and Hobbes_?" he asked, to change the subject, mostly.

"I know, right?" Quinn asked, taking her arm back for real and stabbing at her own mass. "I should start bringing my own lunch…"

"I would have… but I was studying for that Chem. Test we have this afternoon and I might have fell asleep on my open book before I could even shower or get ready for today," Blaine replied.

Both grumbled at the thought of the test, but continued eating, hoping their Macaroni Monsters didn't choke them from the inside of their throats.

***

"Quinn, Quinn, Quinn Fabray?"

Quinn turned and smiled when she saw it was her partner in crime. Rachel flipped her hair over her shoulder and said, "We may not be working together anymore, but I need your help anyway."

Quinn crossed her arms over her chest, jutting her hip out to one side a little bit. "And what is it, Ms. Berry?" she asked.

Rachel stood her ground, her eyes intense as she stared at Quinn, daring her to let her guard down. "I need you to get Kurt and I in the Cheerios for the week…"

Quinn raised an eyebrow, "Why should I do that?"

"Because you'll be using the A/V club's speakers, and those are being affected by some power ghosts that could become poltergeists in the near future. Suzy Pepper we can handle with silver, but these spirits will not be affected by anything like that, or anything at all. They're old spirits, and those are the kinds we must look out for," Rachel replied, like everyone in the world should know that information.

Quinn sighed, "So you're going to sing them out?"

Rachel grinned, "And Kurt has a message for Blaine. You're performance this week is at his soccer game, right?"

Quinn grinned, "Got yourself a deal, Rach…" and they shook on it.

***

Blaine was one of the first out of his Chemistry test. Either he had studied just enough, or he was just very smart. He left the room without another word and trekked down the hall to the very start of the Rift. He didn't actually go down the hall… he just stared down at locker 113 longingly.

Ever since giving up his son, so to speak, he had been longing to see the child again. He had heard stories that, in two months in the human realm,  _years_  could go by in the Spirit World. One could also trek for miles and miles, and have gone one hundred miles in a minute. Of course, times varied between people who entered the Spirit World. "Many lives have been lost, trying to study the time and space within the Rift," Rachel had told him. "It's best that you just not wonder. The only beings that can traverse both our world and the Spirit World without harm are the dragons. Psychics should really ask  _them_  about the physics of the Spirit World."

"How old do you think Jeremy is now?" a voice asked.

Blaine turned and saw Quinn. He must have been standing there, thinking, for a while. Quinn was thorough when she took a test, and so she could be there for hours if given the opportunity.

"It's only been a day," Blaine replied. "He's probably a toddler now?"

Quinn rubbed his back, "Come on. We have Spanish."

"I don't waaaaannnnnnnnnaaaaaaaa," Blaine whined, slumping suddenly, "Kurt's in that class, and I don't wanna even look at him!"

Quinn scoffed a little, "One, we sit in the front, and he sits in the back, and two, I am tired of your attitude, Harry Potter!"

Blaine was taken aback, but he raised his eyebrows, "Hermioneeeeeee!"

"No! You're acting… you're acting like Garfield on a Monday," Quinn finished, crossing her arms over her chest and huffing slightly, blowing a strand of blonde hair that had the audacity to escape her ponytail out of her face.

Blaine opened his mouth and scoffed a little, pretending to be mortally wounded by the statement. The two paused in their act before looking at each other, smiling coyly, and then breaking out into peals of laughter. Then they each put one of their arms around the other's back and headed off to the spooky, low-lit Spanish hall, still laughing like idiots. Oh, the stares that followed them.

***

"Come on, Kurt," Rachel said, throwing the uniform at him. "We won Coach Sylvester's test fair and square. We do this routine, we get the spirits out of the system, case closed."

"Rachel," Kurt said, fingering the pants on the men's uniform with a bit of disgust, "They're polyester. And you know I haven't sung since seventh grade, and even then, I was in the background!"

"Come on! I suggested the song so that it would be in your range, and I'll be singing with you."

"I thought you would want to take  _all_  the lyrics, though…" Kurt replied, taking a sip of his coffee. They were in his room, and he was sitting on his bed, while Rachel brushed down her own uniform, looking for fleas… or something.

Rachel smiled, "I would, but it's Blaine's soccer game. I thought you might want to win him back."

Kurt started, and then blushed, "Why… why would I want that? You heard him today… he wants nothing to do with me."

Rachel paused and dropped her uniform to stare at him. She made a 'riiiing, riiing' noise and made to 'pick up' an imaginary phone: "Hello? Oh, hi… yeah. I'll tell him." She set her pretend phone down and said, "Africa wants  _denial_  back."

"What?" Kurt asked.

"Jeremy—remember him?—noticed some sort of bond between you two. Did you  _not_  notice that he was glowing by the end? That's a sure sign that the dragon is getting the nutrients it needs. Say them with me now—" she said, and Kurt sat at attention, saying them with her: "—a high level of Spiritual energy and a romantic bond between it's chosen parents!"

Kurt's blush deepened, "And you think a Britney Spears song is going to get this romantic bond to connect again?"

Rachel grinned, but sighed dramatically, "Honey, this song will mend the  _fraying_  parts of the thread between you two. And if that doesn't work, then I will try all I can to make him see why you two were meant to be."

"That rhymed," Kurt pointed out.

"I know."

"If you say anything about us being two sides of a coin and that's its our destiny to be together, I will start calling you the Slash Dragon, and if the Slash Dragon turns out to be real, I bet he'll eat you," Kurt said.

"How dare you cheat on the great  _Harry Potter_  with the equally great  _Merlin_ ," Rachel said, her jaw dropping.

Kurt smiled, "Hey.  _Merlin_  saw us first."

"Technically, our  _obsession_  with  _Merlin_  saw us first…" Rachel pointed out. Then she realized something, "Get the uniform on! I want to see if it fits! Then get out of it, wet your throat, and let's get singing!"

***

"Are you sure?" Rachel asked the next day, smiling at the yellow lizard spirit. Theta nodded his wise old head and then shook it.

"I was afraid you might ask. And I was afraid you might literally talk me into telling you. But yes. The evening that I let young Mister Chiffon out was the night I had another vision: of Misters Anderson and Hummel and their destiny together."

Rachel grinned at Quinn playfully. The blonde rolled her eyes.

Rachel was then struck with something, "What did 'Xander mean by the warning of the burning horizon?"

"It's just that. A warning. We dragons have no clue about it, but Alexander saw it and had to warn you. I wish I could give you more information, Miss Berry," Theta replied. There was a small mewl, and Theta smiled. "Jeremy misses his parents. Not so much his father as his mother, but still…"

"I wish he could see him," Rachel replied sadly. "Tell him his parents are fine individually… but we're working on the… overall bond…"

Theta chuckled, "Don't meddle too much, you two," he chastised, but his reptilian lips were twitching up into a smile. "They may have a destiny, but they have to realize it on their own…"

Quinn sighed, "But they're soooo thick-headed about it!"

Theta chuckled again, "Patience, my dears…"

Rachel smiled and heard some people walking out of some doors in the other hallways. "We have to go. Kurt, Quinn and I have a performance to do at half-time for Blaine's soccer match…"

" _Football_!" Quinn hissed almost automatically. Rachel elbowed her as she said her goodbyes to the old dragon and silently closed the door to locker 113.

"By the way, I have the first season of  _Merlin_  to give back to you. It's in my sports bag, so… can you wait until after the match?" Quinn asked.

Rachel squee'd a little, "Did you like it?"

"That conversation with Theta reminded me of the conversations between Merlin and the Dragon," Quinn replied sheepishly. "'Destiny' and all that. You never told me that the dragons were the only psychic beings besides spirits themselves with Predestination…"

"No human psychic has it. And spirits in the Spirit World are chained to the constant shift of time and space in their world, so they see glimpses into both the past  _and_  the future…"

"Wow," Quinn sighed as they got into the girl's locker room. "Now I'm just nervous for Kurt. Think this'll work?"

"With me off the field for the second half of the performance, it should," Rachel replied with a lot of confidence in her face and voice. She put her hands on her hips, adjusting the Cheerios uniform she had been wearing all day (Coach Sylvester insisted), "Remember, you're taking that second half, so that's why Kurt and I aren't doing much dancing, nor do we even have pom-poms. We have to make the microphone switch between us as natural as possible, so Blaine keeps his eyes on Kurt."

"Make Kurt look good, got it, Coach," Quinn replied, rolling her eyes just a little. "Man, Blaine better at least  _think_  about joining back up after this."

"If he doesn't…" Rachel said, her voice softening with a little hint of doubt, "…I'll have to break out a little known truth about Kurt…"

***

Blaine was on a natural high. It had been a good first half, with many passes and teamwork galore. He kicked the ball a lot to his other half on the team, a scrawny boy named Jeremy. When he realized the name of his other forward, Blaine's heart panged and he looked to the school again, wondering how his draconian son was doing.

"Blaine!" someone called, and Blaine was reminded he was still dribbling the ball down the field, so he passed it to the caller, a redhead named Nathan.

But it was half-time now, and the score was 1-0, and McKinley was kicking the other team's butt. It was always a good feeling. McKinley would be undefeated come the summer months. Blaine would make sure of it.

Blaine was sweaty, and all he wanted to do was sit in the locker room until the next half started, but as he did, he was reminded that  _Kurt_  and  _Rachel_  had been in cheerleading uniforms all day, and Rachel had been paired off with the goalkeeper at the start of the game. Kurt, as a boy, walked out behind the rest of the soccer team's benchwarmers and substitutes, but Blaine really didn't care ( _really_ ).

So Blaine doubled back as set-up for the half-time show ended and the cheerleaders were getting themselves situated.

Brittany came out first with her bobbing ponytail and two microphones. One she handed to Kurt, the other she gave to Rachel.  _If Rachel's singing, then the spirits in the sound system are going down_ , Blaine thought,  _so why is Mr. High-and-Mighty getting in on all this?_

A karaoke track sounded from the aforementioned haunted speakers. There was some very loud feedback, but since the ghosts' arrival, it always did that… then it worked just fine… except for some weird wind sounds when nothing was playing and they were just… on.

Kurt and Rachel came to the middle of the field as the backup dancers starting their little thing. Blaine realized which song this was. As a gay man, he knew Britney Spears from his concerts to the shower-head when he sang in the showers…

Kurt and Rachel sang together at the beginning, their voices mixing beautifully, like a visual of milk mixed in coffee (to the ears):

" _Oh baby, baby_  
Oh baby, baby  
Oh baby, baby…"

Then Kurt took the vocals. Blaine watched as Rachel kept singing (softly, perhaps. Making Kurt look and sound  _damn_  good), looking to the big speakers on either side of them, and seeing the aura seem to leave. Looks like these spirits wouldn't manifest themselves into their human form…

 _"How was I supposed to know_  
That something wasn't right here  
Oh baby baby  
I shouldn't have let you go  
And now you're out of sight, yeah  
Show me, how you want it to be  
Tell me baby  
'Cause I need to know now what we've got…"

The whole cheer-squad erupted into the chorus:

" _My loneliness is killing me_  
I must confess, I still believe  
When I'm not with you I lose my mind  
Give me a sign  
Hit me baby one more time…"

Blaine couldn't take his eyes off Kurt and the implications the song was giving him. Blaine hoped he wasn't just making it all up in his head, but he could have  _sworn_  Kurt had turned and looked at him as he had sung " _show me how you want it to be…_ " and " _my loneliness is killing me_." Blaine tore his eyes away from Kurt for a second, looking to Rachel to see when she would quietly take her leave to lead the spirits away.

Thank goodness the parents couldn't see what was  _actually_  going on. They would freak out.

Kurt sung again, obviously the main singer here. Which was odd. Rachel was in the choir… but Kurt's voice was almost  _angelic_  compared to hers. Blaine's eyes were glued on Kurt again:

" _Oh baby, baby_  
The reason I breathe is you  
Boy you got me blinded  
Oh baby, baby  
There's nothing that I wouldn't do  
That's not the way I planned it  
Show me, how you want it to be  
Tell me baby  
'Cause I need to know now what we've got…"

Again, the cheer-squad took the chorus. Blaine saw, out of the corner of his eye, Rachel hand the microphone to Quinn. She was still singing the song as she tiptoed off the field and towards the locker room. Ah… so that  _had_  been the plan…

" _My loneliness is killing me_  
I must confess, I still believe  
When I'm not with you I lose my mind  
Give me a sign  
Hit me baby one more time…"

Quinn took the bridge of the song, her sweet voice filling the stands and making several students (and parents and staff) of both genders swoon just a bit:

" _Oh baby, baby_  
Oh baby, baby  
Ah, yeah, yeah  
Oh baby, baby  
How was I supposed to know  
Oh pretty baby  
I shouldn't have let you go  
I must confess, that my loneliness  
Is killing me now  
Don't you know I still believe  
That you will be here  
And give me a sign  
Hit me baby one more time…"

Everyone on the field burst out again for the third and final chorus:

" _My loneliness is killing me_  
I must confess, I still believe  
When I'm not with you I lose my mind  
Give me a sign  
Hit me baby one more time…"

Then Kurt came to the middle, all dancing stopped, and the music was even turned off as Kurt sang, his eyes trained on Blaine. Blaine, it should be noted, was standing on the track part of the field (for games, soccer played on the football fields, which had been repainted and reconfigured for them) in the middle of it all, so that he was literally right across the yellow rope that divided the field from the fans. So he was literally right across the yellow rope from  _Kurt Hummel_ , who was wearing a  _Cheerios uniform_ (not to mention all the polyester)  _singing_ to _him!_

" _I must confess that my loneliness_  
Is killing me now  
Don't you know I still believe  
That you will be here  
And give me a sign  
Hit me baby one more time!"

Blaine heard the wild cheering and clapping, but for a tiny moment, it was just him and Kurt. …Before Blaine sobered up, and ran to the lockers for the last couple minutes of half-time.

***

The weekend had been uneventful. The two Slash Dragons (here known as Rachel and Quinn) had called each other, Kurt, and Blaine about the performance, but Kurt was still embarrassed that nothing had actually happened afterwards, Blaine mainly made a noise about it and changed the subject (the epic 3-0 win of the actually game for McKinley was his favorite), and of course when they called each other they were exasperated and disappointed in Blaine, mostly.

Finally, Monday rolled around, and Blaine and Quinn were still eating with the other jocks at lunch, and Rachel and Kurt were still eating together at their usual table with no one else.

Kurt sighed, " _Never_  get me on the Cheerios again. We didn't even sit with them last week and I still got sick of them."

Rachel was shuffling her Tarot cards. "Want me to do you?" she asked. About the Tarot cards… not about anything else.

She was plotting to get Blaine alone in between her end-of-the-day choir practice and Blaine's soccer practice. Since he hadn't jumped to joining up again (taking Quinn with him), it was time to tell Blaine the truth about Kurt and his incredible mistrust (and difficulty) with other people (besides herself,  _of course_ ).

"Yes, please. If anything about love comes up, though, I'm not listening."

Rachel looked to the back of Blaine's head as she replied, "Fair enough..."

She shuffled the cards a few more times, then lay out three of them face down. She picked up the first card and flipped it over. "Nine of Swords. In your past, you lost someone close to you. This indicates that there was a period of great sadness."

"More like a  _never ending_  period, but yes," Kurt muttered, thinking Rachel couldn't hear him.

Rachel went on, going with it. She flipped over the next card. "Chains. Your present situation involves being chained, so to speak, to a relationship that is going no where," she looked up at Kurt, "In relation to the last card, I'd break with that relationship."

Kurt blinked at the realization, but kept quiet. He never got too angry with his little Gooseberry, unless what she was doing was stupid. A Tarot reading, while  _nothing_  like the dragons' Predestination abilities, was a great insight to humans' lives.

Rachel smiled weakly, glad he was at least thinking about it, before she flipped over the last card, "Ten of Swords. If you continue going like this… your hopes will be dashed, and your mind and soul will be cast into darkness," she said sadly.

Kurt's eyes widened, and he suddenly sunk down in his seat, his head falling into his hands. "Oh no… You don't think… You don't think I ruined things because I've been…" he couldn't go on from the thought.

Rachel got up, moved around the table and sat with Kurt, not even bothering to put the cards away. She put her arm around him and rubbed his back fondly. "That night… though you made a promise you would take her place, you let her death influence not only to go into all this paranormal stuff, but you let it sabotage your future relationships, as well…"

Kurt looked at her. "So… why did  _you_  stick around?"

"Because I hoped that someday I would see you go back to that time when we were 'married.' Because even though it was just a game, you smiled and laughed like a normal human, despite the fact you kept conjuring me bouquets that disappeared as soon as you handed them over…" Rachel replied, tapping his nose.

He gave her a small smile. "You'd be an elder in an ancient culture, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry."

"No…" Rachel confessed, reminding Kurt of the Tenth Doctor for a moment, "I just like to hear myself talk."

***

"Blaine, Blaine, Blaine Anderson?"

Blaine turned around. He still had a few minutes before his soccer practice, but he wanted to have some time to think in the locker rooms before getting out to the fields and kicking some balls around (He'd write that one down later).

"What's up, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Berry?" Blaine asked. He was glad there was, at least, nothing awkward between him and Rachel. That was nice.

"Can I talk to you—" Blaine nodded before she had properly finished, "—about Kurt?"

Blaine immediately tensed. Rachel, with her womanly ways, saw many emotions pass behind his eyes. "S-Sure…"

Rachel smiled and stepped into step with Blaine as they took a rather long route from Blaine's last period Spanish class to the boy's locker room. She also slipped her arm through Blaine's, so that they walked arm in arm. As they walked, she talked. "Since you know about Kurt's mom's death, we can skip to the part about his behavior  _today_ … meaning this day and age.

"When Holly died… Kurt took it really hard. He didn't blame himself, though. He didn't really blame  _anyone_. But he took it hard. He took it so hard, that he started sabotaging his relationships with other people…" here she paused, "You know how we never really had meetings or fun stuff at his house in the beginning?"

"Yeah," Blaine replied.

"That's because, after Mrs. Hummel died, Kurt became distant from his father. They never felt comfortable with each other until… until you came into Kurt's life, Blaine, and he actually started to repair his relationship with his father," Rachel replied, biting her lower lip as she smiled at the implication.

Blaine blushed and looked away from his friend, but he allowed Rachel to continue (mostly because she might still kill him if he didn't) because he didn't have much to say about the speculation.

"Anyway. He's still getting the hang of not sabotaging relationships… but he just needs several chances to make it right…" Rachel said.

They had made it to the boy's locker room, and Rachel was unhanding him so she could face him. "I think you need to come back to us… so that Kurt can get another chance to set things right. Who knows," she said, a slight grin on her face, "Maybe he'll get it right this time…"

Blaine gave her a small smile back, but she was rubbing his upper arm a little and saying, "Think about it," before she turned around and literally skipped down the empty hall toward the doors to the outside world.

***

"Well… all in all, a rather successful bunch of days," Quinn said that evening.

They had decided to meet up at the Lima Bean after Blaine had called Quinn to say they were joining the team again, telling her to call Kurt about it, because he'd call Rachel about it (Things were still weird between Kurt and Blaine, but after today… maybe not so much). Rachel had called Quinn about an hour later, demanding the blonde meet her at the Lima Bean for celebrations.

" _Very_  successful. Found out about the destiny between our best guy friends. Had one sing to the other. Handed 'the other' insight about the 'one.' Got them back in the same business together. Now all we have to do is facilitate a romantic relationship and make sure they both get a clue," Rachel replied, as if she were plotting something. Experience suggested she was. "Not to mention since Blaine's back in business, you are too, Quinn, Quinn, Quinn Fabray."

They sipped contentedly on their drinks for a minute before Rachel grinned smugly and raised her drink, "To Destiny?" she said, more as a statement than a question, then added, "With a capital 'D'?"

Quinn grinned at the relevant  _Merlin_  reference and raised her own Styrofoam cup, "To Destiny."

And they clinked (though it sounded more like a dull thunk and some random swishing) their cups, grinning at the busy near future they were bound to have.


	9. Night of the Bieste

"Move over, Dave!" a voice hissed. Another body was thrown on top of the brunet boy, but it was all right. Puck wasn't as heavy as Karofsky even with football season going strong.

The third boy, Finn Hudson, chuckled slightly at the two before their mission came into view. What the three, rather large, rather mean-looking football stars were doing that evening, watching their coach's house on high alert, no one could tell you. But there was something up, and Dave Karofsky wanted to see if anything weird was actually going on before he took it up with the paranormal bunch that happened to save the school's butt on a daily basis.

"I swear to God she isn't even home," Puck hissed in Karofsky's ear. Karofsky elbowed him under his ribs and the other fell silent.

"What do you think is going on?" Finn asked, elbowing his way up to the other two (who were still piled on top of each other… rather, Puck was piled on top of Karofsky). "It couldn't be any normal possession. I  _know_  possession—"

"—Yeah, yeah. Santana was possessed freshman year when you two had sex. How did it feel to fuck a ghost?" Puck asked, leering at the star quarterback.

Finn rolled his eyes and looked past his friend at the house, "Lights are off, car is gone, no real garage, unless she uses it to torture students or something…"

"I'd use the basement," Puck replied, laughing.

"Would you two  _shut up_ ," Dave hissed, looking through their bush at the house. The reason for the lights being turned off happened to be because Coach Beiste, the 'mission' before them, was just coming up her driveway.

"Think she just had a date or something?" Finn asked, "I mean, her and Mr. Schue have been getting closer since she transferred here last fall…"

Karofsky shook his head, "You saw her this morning. She had red stuff all over her before she took a shower. I park next to her every morning…"

"So you saw this red stuff on her, and at second period gym, it was gone," Puck replied. "I know, I noticed it too when I went to tell her I couldn't make it to next week's game… She was just getting ready to take a shower and her beefy arms were covered in… in  _something_."

Finn sighed, the only one in the group that actually hadn't seen the phenomenon. "I think you're  _both_  crazy," he replied, crossing his arms (well… as best he could with both elbows on soft, wet grass).

"Shh!  _Shh!_ " Puck said, gesturing wildly as Beiste went inside.

They sat out there for another hour, but nothing happened. Finally, Puck got up, helped Dave to his feet, and the three silently got the crap out of there without getting caught. None of them happened to see the pair of yellow eyes that stared at them as they trekked across the street to Finn's car…

***

"We still on for this weekend?" Quinn asked. She was finally sitting among the psychics, eating and laughing with them. She had been doing so for a good week now. Another week and Halloween would be upon them, but none of the psychics were paying much mind to the fact. Except one… but he was busy trying not to sabotage his new relationships with the two 'newbies.'

"Oh yeah. They're finally coming over to my house after avoiding it since eradicating them 'Weeping Angels'," Blaine replied, making his strange pulling motion. "I think that calls for a little 'Hells yeah,' Ms. Granger."

"Hells to the yeah," Quinn replied, mirroring her boy.

Rachel rolled her eyes, "Oi… if you two are Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, what does that make us?" she asked, knowing the answer (Quinn told her) but wanting to get it out there anyway.

Blaine turned to Quinn, knowing Rachel knew the roles, but knowing Kurt did not. The aforementioned boy raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, but there was a hint of a smile on his face. Just a hint.

"Why, Rachel, you are the Doctor Donna, and Kurt is little Merlin. Quite a cross-over we have here, but I like it," Blaine replied, pouting his lips out like a heavily made-up (female) celebrity at the Grammys. (AKA making a kissy face at Rachel.)

Rachel lolled her tongue out at him, "AKA I'm Ronald Weasley and Kurt is stupid dumb little sister Ginny."

"Hey!" Kurt shouted, pretending to take serious offense to her. Then he paused, having never heard of the roles before, "Wait a minute… don't Ginny and Harry get together at the end and have three children?"

"Well… we already have the one, so I think we're on the right track," Blaine replied, laughing.

Then both realized the implications, shut their traps, and looked off to the side, blushing, for a good moment.

"Ron and Hermione get together as well. Two children," Quinn replied, shrugging as she looked over to Rachel, putting up two fingers to prove her point. The edge of Rachel's mouth twitched upward vaguely.

"Better get to the Spirit World and wait for some eggs to hatch," Rachel replied.

Kurt and Blaine glanced up at their friends. Kurt made his Diva face, "Don't tell me… you two are actually dating, aren't you?" he asked.

Rachel gave him a gentle smirk, "Are we going to switch spots as older and younger sibling if I say yes?" she asked.

"And will you be the Musical version of Ron or the book version?" Quinn asked, eyebrow raised.

Kurt thought about it for a minute before looking at Blaine. If Quinn and Rachel were indeed dating, then he should probably make a move soon on Blaine. Or Puck would take him out from under his nose, as the omnisexual mowhawked boy was wont to do. (Kurt secretly called Puck 'Captain' after Captain Jack Harkness. Just to toy with the jock's brain a little more that usual.) The influence of Rachel and Quinn's still secretive relationship (or not-relationship) and Puck's bedroom eyes toward Blaine was just enough to make Kurt drag Blaine behind the school and kiss him senseless.

"Musical Ron. But I'm Ginny, so… the roles would be kind of switched…" Kurt replied.

"That makes my brain hurt," Blaine replied. Incidentally, he was thinking the same thoughts Kurt had, excluding the whole Puck aspect. The other thing that was driving  _him_ was his son, who he missed a lot—it was becoming a dull ache where the hole in his heart was.

"Then we are," Quinn replied. "After Blaine and I rejoined, I decided it was time to relive what could have been in eighth grade." She put her hand over Rachel's which made Blaine swoon a little. He had been secretly rooting for them for the whole time, ever since he knew that Rachel had once pined for Quinn, and Quinn had actually told him she had a crush on her.

"Congratulations," Kurt said, taking Rachel's other hand. "You have my full support."

Quinn and Rachel gazed at each other for a moment before Kurt continued, "But Quinn? You so much as break my girl's heart for something or someone else, and I will not hesitate in showing the full extent of both my abilities."

Blaine shuddered at the implications, but then he started, "Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel?" he asked, his voice going a range higher than was normal.

Kurt looked at him like he had just been possessed… which could have happened, to his defense. "What…?" he asked, dragging the question out a little more than was necessary.

"I don't think I've ever seen you with the illusion end of your inherited gifts…" Blaine replied, wide eyes moving as he turned his head from staring out the window (it was raining) to Kurt's face.

Kurt blinked, "I never use them during a mission, so neither you nor Quinn has…"

"He wants to see you do something with an illusion, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Hummel," Rachel replied, as Kurt was being socially dense, as usual.

"Oh," Kurt replied, blushing. "Brings me back to my childhood, when I used to produce roses for my lady love," Kurt said, teasing Rachel a little with a small sneer.

Rachel rolled her eyes, "And then you broke my heart by telling me you liked boys when we were  _seven_ ," she replied.

Blaine raised his eyebrows, "You beat me," he quipped. "I wanted to kiss boys when I was only nine in a half…"

"Lucky. I didn't realize I liked both genders until eighth grade…" Quinn said.

Rachel raised her hand, "Seventh grade."

"Always last one, eh, Herman?" Blaine teased. Quinn growled a little, and Blaine put his hands up like a criminal.

Kurt put a hand on the table, suddenly, and Blaine was forced to watch as the other pulled his hand away, a small glass appearing where Kurt's hand had been. Kurt blinked his eyes, and a small lily appeared, floating in the water that was in the glass bowl he had just created. Kurt smiled at Blaine and Quinn's looks of awe. "I tend to make pretty things appear. Might be Mom's fault for that."

There was a loud crash as three of the football boys ran in, the biggest one bumping into the table and causing the lily and the glass bowl to disappear, as Kurt lost his concentration. "Kurt… guys," Puck said, out of breath.

"What's wrong, Captain?" Kurt asked, raising his eyebrow at the man. Karofsky was holding on to Puck's arm ( _That's odd_ , Blaine thought.), and Finn was trying hard not to throw up, even though he had probably not eaten.

"There was… a wolf in Coach Beiste's office when we went to put our sports bags away…" Karofsky replied, not believing what he was saying until he was reminded that he _saw it with his own eyes_.

Kurt didn't even bat an eyelash as he got up. His actions caused the other three to get up as well. He made a gesture for the three bigger males to take the lead, and they obliged, leading the four psychics out of the cafeteria and down the hall to Beiste's office. When the four paranormal investigators looked in the window of the door, they saw that Beiste was putting on some socks, looking around the room nervously.

"Well… we  _thought_  we saw a wolf in her office," Finn replied, hiding from Coach Beiste as she looked through the window of the door to her office.

Kurt shook his head, "I believe you three," he said, crossing his arms and getting away from the door. "This could be one of those rare moments when the spirit of an  _animal_ possess a human. They did it in the old days… mostly wolves. That's where the legend of the werewolf comes from…"

Blaine and Quinn looked at each other. "So… Lupin was only possessed by a wolf on the full moon?" Blaine asked.

Rachel rolled her eyes and flicked Blaine behind the ear, "That's fiction. Welcome to the real world, Blaine McDorkyPants…"

Kurt was hardly listening to this side conversation. "Are you sure it was a wolf?" he asked Puck.

"Yeah. Yellow teeth… snarling and snapping at us," Puck replied.

Kurt raised an eyebrow, "You went in?"

"Puck was trying to be a hero and save Coach Beiste or something," Karofsky replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

Karofsky's mind must have wandered, for Kurt smiled at him, his eyebrow still raised, "Or rather, he was trying to save  _you_ , David," he replied.

Puck and Karofsky looked off to opposite sides, and Finn was the one to raise his eyebrows at the two. Neither of the boys said anything, not even Blaine, who had an inkling of what was going on.

"No matter," Kurt replied. "I'll need to do an exorcism as soon as possible, in that case," he replied.

"We all have practice, though," Quinn said.

"Then I'll wait. Coach Beiste will be out there too," Kurt replied. He turned to the three boys, "Thanks for telling us. We'll take it from here."

Finn nodded, and the other two followed him to the cafeteria for a late lunch.

Kurt turned to Quinn and Blaine, "I want you two to restrain Beiste. Quinn can use her glowing to trap her and calm her down while you wait for us to get back to you. I need to run some errands for Dad after school, but I'll be back to split the spirit from her body as soon as possible."

"And I'll be waiting for Quinn's practice to end, so if anything happens, you'll at least have someone who knows what they're doing," Rachel replied, then crooked her head to the side a little, "No offense."

Quinn and Blaine shrugged and replied, "None taken," quick as a chess-clock thumper.

***

"Hey, see you tomorrow," Jeremy said, slapping Blaine on the upper arm as he ran off the fields to the locker rooms. Blaine would have liked to join him, but he had to go help Quinn restrain Coach Beiste.

He walked slowly toward the football fields, watching as Beiste make a few notes on her clipboard. She always stayed on the field a little longer than was necessary, making notes and things as she walked across the fields and checked for anything that might have been left.

Quinn was on the other side of the field, holding her arms, as the jacket she was wearing wasn't enough in the chilly autumn air. Blaine winked at Quinn in the fading light and she smiled back, closing her eyes. Blaine had seen his best friend Glow before. They had needed to use her once before, as Rachel's singing could only work on spirits if they were split from the body they were possessing. With Quinn, they could get the whole entity to follow the glowing. Quinn could also just get one entity to follow her, not a whole group of them that happened to be in the same vicinity.

Rachel was in the stands, standing up as she saw her girlfriend's Glow. She quietly came up from behind her and grabbed her hand, causing Quinn to glow brighter. Beiste was mesmerized, but Quinn's Glow wasn't telling her to follow her, like Rachel's gift did. It was just making Beiste' stand in one spot.

Until Blaine moved towards her. Once the wolf in Beiste realized it was being snuck up on (unintentionally. Blaine was only trying to get past Coach Beiste to join his two best girl friends), Beiste's eyes were on Blaine.  _But they were glowing yellow_. Blaine stood, frozen as shock as Beiste was suddenly in wolf form: all black save for the yellow eyes and white, gleaming teeth.

Blaine was still frozen in fear when the wolf came at him, jumping on him to rip his arm off or something. Quinn had stopped glowing, and both girls were running at him. Blaine only managed to get the wolf off of him by kicking her firmly in the stomach with his spikes. Thank goodness he hadn't changed shoes. Beiste was thrown back into Rachel, who caught the wolf like it was only a rather large dog (which it was, to be fair).

Blaine was relieved for only a minute, before the adrenaline melted away and he realized the wolf had clawed up his left arm pretty back. He clutched at it, a sickening feeling washing over him when he felt all the blood that was flowing out of the wound.

Kurt was upon him in a second. Blaine hadn't seen Kurt sneaking up, but he was grateful he did, because the wolf stopped struggling, and Rachel could finally drop it. Blaine saw the familiar split of the offending spirit and body as Beiste's human form appeared on the ground, unconscious.

Rachel began to sing, and Quinn breathed out, kneeling next to Blaine as her girlfriend went toward the school, through the girl's locker room, and onward toward the Rift with the wolf spirit following her like a trained dog. Quinn took off her sweatshirt, but Kurt stopped her and took out a first aid kit. He hardly smiled as he cleaned and bandaged Blaine's upper arm. His eyebrows were screwed up in a worried expression as he looked Blaine over.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

Blaine nodded, "Just a flesh-wound," he said. Quinn, at least, laughed at his brilliantly placed Monty Python joke.

Kurt didn't smile, "I shouldn't have put you in harm's way…" he said.

Blaine blinked and moved forward, only to wince as the action pulled at his wound. He stopped, and Kurt instead came forward to meet him. "Kurt. I'm fine, really. But my parents are going to freak out when they see this…"

"Then come stay with me," Kurt said, but then realized what that might entail. "I mean… go stay with someone else for a while. Tell your parents you're working on a project or something, and you don't want to come home until you're done…"

Blaine blinked. Here Kurt was, showing concern for him when there had been little Kurt could have done to show that Blaine and him were actually moving forward toward some kind of twisted friendship.

Blaine looked from Kurt to Quinn, "Quinn's living with Mercedes, and I think Rachel's house is their haven for… whatever two girls get up to these days," this earned him a playful slap on Blaine's good arm from Quinn. "I think… I'll just go home and hope I can hide the bandage," he replied, for the third option—staying with Kurt—still seemed like a bad idea after all the crap that had gone down between them.

Rachel came back to them and was at once motherly cooing over Blaine and his wound: "Let me call Nurse Ryan," she said. Blaine was reminded of the sweet-faced nurse. She was like a Squib from  _Harry Potter_ : her only 'psychic' power being to see ghosts (since she was no longer a student at McKinley, that was still a pretty big deal).

Blaine nodded, "Sure. But then I have to go home and start wearing long-sleeved shirt until this damned thing heals."

Kurt still had a look of extreme guilt and worry on his face, and Blaine cupped his cheek with the hand that was attached to his good arm. "I'm  _fine_  Kurtie," he said, smiling.

Rachel was on the phone at once, going off to the side as she asked for Nurse Ryan. Kurt turned away from Blaine and stood up. Blaine was afraid he would start some weird form of heroic BSOD… and he wasn't far off.

***

It was a couple days passed the incident.

Blaine's arm hadn't needed any stitches. He just needed to be careful around it. The next morning, though, it didn't sting anymore, and he was still able to do normal things like play soccer and sing and dance to random show-tunes with Rachel and Quinn. Kurt was still suffering from heroic BSOD, but once he saw that Blaine was in good shape, he lightened up a little bit.

It was Friday, and the promised sleepover at Blaine's house was upon them. Blaine was glad his parents hadn't see the wound, but it really didn't matter, as his mother and sister were out of town visiting his aunt, and his father had his weekend work-fest.

"They trust you to take care of the house?" Quinn asked, the first one at the house after school let out.

"They trust me," Blaine replied, "Besides. I have friends who don't drink."

Quinn nodded, looking through his cupboards, "And your parents must have hidden the liquor."

"Naughty, naughty Quinny," Blaine replied, shaking his index finger at her and tutting.

Quinn grinned mischievously and took out a bunch of vegetables and began cutting them. Blaine got started on making dinner (and figuring out breakfast). Then he sighed, and Quinn was forced to stop cutting (lest she cut her fingers off) to look at him.

"He looked like I was about to die. Think he would have confessed all his wrongs had I been?" Blaine asked.

Quinn scoffed, "Still on about dear Kurt Hummel, Blainey?" she asked, going back to her finger-food preparation.

"Hey,  _I_  wasn't the one who had all that heroic BSOD for the last few days. It's like I was a peasant and he was the knight. 'I should have been there. I should have took the blow.' Whine, moan, 'I'm King Arthur and you're Merlin. You're just a manservant.'"

Quinn twirled around, the knife held up in her hand menacingly. Blaine backed into the counter a little.

"There you go… What happened to the 'I think I'm in love with Sir Kurt the Totally Awesome?" she asked.

Blaine started washing the other vegetables Quinn had taken out when he had dinner and breakfast at least prepared and ready to just be popped in the oven or placed in a frying pan. (Vegan lasagna for dinner, vegan pancakes with fake syrup for breakfast. Mallory was convinced Blaine thought he was fat and so was dieting. Blaine let his little sister think what she wanted.)

"Nothing. I still think he's Sir Kurt the Totally Awesome, If Not A Total Jerk-Ass At Times. But the kingdom of McKinley won't want  _two_  Kings."

Quinn chuckled, "I should have never let you watch  _Merlin_ , you twat."

"Too late. Epic Merthur shipper in the house," Blaine replied.

"In that case, I think you should push Arthur against the wall using the magics, and kiss him senseless," Quinn replied.

"I think I'd rather take things slow. A little Gooseberry told me he's still getting the hang of not sabotaging relationships, and I want to wait until he's good a ready not to sabotage something I've kind of wanted since meeting the boy…" Blaine replied.

"Fine," Quinn replied, acting defeated. She was about to go on when the doorbell rang.

Blaine kissed his friend on the cheek, "I'll get it, honey," he joked, earning him a light kick in the ankle from Quinn.

He was still laughing when he let Rachel and Kurt into his humble home for their first sleepover at the Anderson residence.


	10. Anniversary

It all started when Blaine noticed the empty seat where Kurt should have been in their English class. Rachel didn't seem fazed by it in the least, which was equally disconcerting. Quinn looked at him and raised his eyebrows at him before turning to a blushing Karofsky and Puck, who looked like they were  _finally_  together.

"Makes sense," Quinn had said. "Puck  _was_  his first kiss."

"Glad he's over Kurt and me," Blaine replied absentmindedly, his head really going over what was wrong with Kurt.

Blaine was like that for the rest of the day. It was Halloween, he realized, with an almost sick feeling in his gut, which meant two things: One: The Rift was busier than ever (Blaine had to be restrained when he saw that spirits were floating around all over the place. Rachel reminded him that they were spirits going to visit loved ones, as Halloween was once called  _All Soul's Eve_. "They'll go back tomorrow," she had promised him), and Two:  _Kurt's mom had died this day._

"Where's Holly?" Blaine asked at lunch. "Does she visit her husband and son?"

Rachel blinked at him, crooking her head to the side as she linked fingers with Quinn under the table (Blaine could tell they were doing it). "No… I don't believe she does. But she has a good reason, I'm sure…" Rachel replied. "She, too, wants Kurt to move on from her death… but Kurt takes it… as a sign that she doesn't actually care…"

"It that why he's not here?" Blaine asked, sitting up straighter.

"Yes," Rachel replied, nodding. Then she saw something pass over Blaine's thoughts and decided to stop whatever it was before he did it, "You can't. Kurt likes to be alone on Halloween, whether that means skipping school or not…"

"Heroic  _fucking_  BSO- _fucking_ -D," Blaine said, causing both Rachel and Quinn to blink up at him.

"Don't Blaine, please," Quinn whined, worry in her lovely features.

Blaine glared at them, "I'm going to do it."

"Don't," Rachel reiterated, "He'd be so mad if you did."

Blaine didn't know what came over him to say what he said, but he found himself saying it anyway, "I'm the mother of his son. I have a right to take care of him even when said son isn't around!"

And that shut both girls up, as they were still up on the whole Kurt-and-Blaine-have-a-Destiny-together-and-Destiny-should-happen-because-Destiny-said-so plan. Plus everyone in the cafeteria was staring at them and it was freaking the girls out to be seen with an alleged madman.

***

It was easy getting past Kurt's dad. Burt Hummel had remembered the day as well, and he had remembered that Blaine worked with Kurt. So with a stack of papers in his hand, Blaine entered the house, telling Burt it was Kurt's homework. As it was Halloween, though, none of the teachers had handed out any assignments, so Blaine just put the papers in a recycling bin in the kitchen before sneaking down the steps to Kurt's room.

Kurt wasn't visible, but Blaine noticed the lump under the white comforter on the bed. Especially when the lump moved so Kurt could get some fresh air. That's when Kurt noticed he wasn't alone. "Bologna is in the top drawer, Dad. We went over this."

"Guess again, Kurt," Blaine replied, a slight smile on his face.

Kurt jumped up into a sitting position and immediately covered his face when he noticed who was standing at the bottom of the steps, "Blaine! I haven't moisturized! You need to call before you come over!" then "And I thought Rachel would have told you I don't like to be bothered on Halloween!"

"I convinced her that it was okay if I came over," Blaine said, and kicked his shoes off.

Kurt watched almost in horror as Blaine climbed on to the bed towards him, peeling back the comforter to slip under it with Kurt. Kurt blinked, taking his hands away from his face carefully. "You should go."

"I should stay," Blaine replied, wrapping his arms around an extra pillow and burrowing his face into it. Kurt made a face like a five-year-old would and poked in the stomach, causing the other to giggle girlishly. But he didn't move, he only picked up his head and stuck his tongue out.

"Why are you here, Blaine?" Kurt said, lowering his voice to almost a cat's hiss.

"I would have brought my pussy, Kurt," Blaine said, grinning at his callback, "But I didn't have time to go home and get her, and I thought the girls were following me."

Kurt raised an eyebrow, his face saying: 'Where is this going?'

Blaine moved so that he was propped up next to Kurt, his arms snaking around the slim boy so that he was pressed against him, "So my hair will have to do," he said, burrowing deeper under the covers so that his hair was level with Kurt's hands.

Kurt shoved him away a little, pulling the blanket over his head childishly, "You're a freak, Blaine Anderson."

Blaine won the battle and managed to pull Kurt in again, his body erupting from under the covers like a shark in those overly dramatic shark movies. He waited until Kurt stopped struggling and thrashing before he replied, "I would stop digging yourself a hole.  _You're_  the original freak."

Kurt seemed tired as he lay there, his hands pressed to Blaine's abs, and his head in the crook of the other boy's neck. He breathed for a moment, his silver-blue eyes fluttering closed, giving Blaine butterfly kisses on his exposed chest (why he was wearing a button-down shirt with most of his chest exposed on a 34 degree day was beyond him—actually, he was reminded he was in a hurry to get out of the locker rooms after practice… perhaps he forgot a few buttons in his mad dash attempt to get the hell out of there). Finally, Kurt sighed, and a tremor went through his whole body. Blaine felt the tension leave his body, and Blaine put a hand up to the back of Kurt's head, kissing his hair fondly.

"I also have the right to be here because of our son, if you haven't forgotten."

Kurt looked up at Blaine, face at full flush. He raised an eyebrow, but his face still looked shy and worried, "You feel it too?"

"Whatever Jeremy is doing, he's given us a weird bond. I can feel your feelings and sometimes we share thoughts. I know it used to be one-sided only for you—the telepathic thing—but now…"

"It's the family phenomenon. Since we're a dragon's chosen parents, he is manipulating the bond between us so we can protect each other so he will still have that romantic bond and its nutrients."

Blaine and Kurt both blushed at the implications, but neither denied them, either.

"You don't have to be alone today," Blaine suddenly said. "I couldn't handle the depression you were feeling today, and since… since we have…  _whatever_  Jeremy is doing to us… I want to be there for you. Like you have been for me…"

Kurt's blush deepened, and he grudgingly placed his head back on Blaine's chest, moving so that he was more comfortably pressed to the other boy. He closed his eyes, and Blaine involuntarily shuddered at the feeling of Kurt's eyelashes closing against his skin. They lay there, quiet, for a long time, and Blaine finally noticed that the other had fallen asleep next to him. He made a half smile, and felt his eyes closing against the darkness in the room.

***

Blaine wasn't sure what woke him up, but he knew he needn't have worried about the feeling that had woken him up: that something was coming. Kurt was just waking as well, and they noticed their positions: Blaine was still lying on his back, and when he turned his head to the side—back to where it had been minutes before, his face ended up buried in Kurt's hair. Kurt was curled along his side with his head tucked up under Blaine's chin, resting on his shoulder.

Kurt moved away with deliberate speed, but then he missed the warmth and moved so that they were only side-by-side under the covers. Blaine chuckled, but his head moved back to the sensation that someone was coming. And he or she was indeed coming: emerging from the wall was a familiar shape.

"Jeremy?" Blaine asked, moving to get up.

"Don't move," said a deep voice. It didn't sound telepathic like when Jeremy was a baby, but then again, Jeremy was bigger and probably much older now—even a month and a half since Blaine had found him that fateful day.

Jeremy came into view, the late daylight shining off his brilliant blue scales. He still had a yellow under belly, but now he had grown what looked like soft, rubbery spikes down his back. His body looked like it came up to Kurt's waist, but his neck was long, like a brontosaurus's, and it made Jeremy look like he could put his head on top of Blaine's head without much difficulty. He had also grown giant wings, that, even as he crawled carefully onto the bed with Blaine and Kurt, he could still stretch the wings beyond Kurt's Queen-sized bed. He swooped his parents up into a careful hug with his powerful arms, and Blaine found himself nuzzling his son. Jeremy let him, chuckling deeply as he did so.

"I missed you guys so much…" he said.

"You're… in adolescence now?" Kurt asked, linking his hand through Jeremy's human-like claws and scratching the leathery skin under Jeremy's wing.

Jeremy began to purr while he talked, "I'm about your age in human years," he replied.

"That's weird to think about," Blaine suddenly said, earning him a chuckle from both Kurt and Jeremy. He smiled at his son, "Seems like only yesterday you talking to me telepathically and barely able to walk…"

Jeremy visibly rolled his brilliant emerald eyes, "Such a mom thing to say…"

"I know, right?" Blaine asked. "How have you been, bud?"

"Lonely without you guys. I mean, my adopted parents are fine: two lovely lady dragons, but they're not you two…"

"We're still teenagers," Kurt said softly, and Jeremy nodded his serpentine head.

"I know," he replied, sadly, licking his father's cheek. His tongue should have been reptilian like the rest of him, but it was rather like being licked by a rather large cat (Jeremy was  _purring_  as well, which should have given something away). "But I see you've found yourselves nicely."

"No thanks to you," Blaine murmured.

Jeremy chuckled, "I don't need your loving bond thanks to my adopted parents. Master Theta, and the Ladies Rachel and Quinn have been hinting that you two haven't taken the hint. So I decided to sort of intensify the bond between you," Jeremy replied, sitting back on his haunches—reminding Blaine and Kurt a lot of little Luna Lovegood, Blaine'scat. "But I have a reason to be here, speaking of Lady Rachel and Lady Quinn. Can you call them over so I can tell you it?"

***

When the girls came over, Blaine had moved to the desk chair, sitting in it sideways as Jeremy situated himself in the corner of the room. Quinn and Rachel sat at the end of Kurt's bed, and after a slight tickling session with Kurt's feet (by Rachel), the four looked over to Jeremy, who cleared his throat.

"First, I must say a few things about my differences from the other dragons," Jeremy said. "Because I chose two humans as my parents, that makes me mentally and emotionally a human as well. Because most dragons do not hatch and run off to the human realm, the rest have the mindset of the first astral dragon, our beloved Dragon King. Because of those ties to him, all dragons are pretty much connected to each other and other dragonly dragons."

"But you aren't, because you chose two humans?" Rachel asked, crooking her head the side.

"Precisely," Jeremy replied, smiling. "It makes me happy that my parents are friends with smart Ladies like yourselves," he said, bowing slightly at the girls. "I am here, though, because the other dragons are getting restless…" he continued, staring out the window for a moment. "Because the King is restless, so are his subjects. I have been noticing that my adopted parents have been talking of opening the Rift for good—" here Rachel and Kurt visibly gasped, Rachel putting her hands to her mouth "—which as Papa and the Lady Rachel know, at least, means that every ghost that wants to get out and stay out in the human realm can."

Quinn looked to Blaine, who shrugged and looked to Kurt, then Rachel.

"Mostly mischievous spirits want to get out into this world and wreak havoc," Rachel explained. "Good ghosts would stay in the Rift, but if the Rift was opened all the time, the bad ghosts would get out, and the world would… descend into chaos…"

Blaine's eyebrows shot up, "And that's a bad thing," he stated, turning back to his son. "How do the dragons fit in to all this, Jeremy?"

"The dragons are the only ones who can open the Rift from the inside. Mr. Chiffon's mistake when he opened the Rift here at that school was both the mistake of the dragon he had contacted  _and_  the fact that Mr. Chiffon was messing with him at all," Jeremy said. "The dragons would be able to breath fire and open the Rift permanently, not only where it is all ready permanently opened—in the ceiling of your high school—but all over the world… staining the horizon in fire…"

Kurt and Rachel turned to each other, eyes wide, "The burning horizon…" they said together.

Blaine and Quinn had heard of Alexander's warning, and when Rachel and Kurt had uttered the words again, they turned to each other, then to Jeremy, "So… because of the dragons getting restless to open the Rift, chaos may descend on mankind… But I thought dragons were supposed to be calm,  _good_  creatures…"

Kurt sighed, "Something must be swaying your king," he said, looking at his son. "Some mischievous spirits who want nothing but to wreak havoc on both the Spirit world and our world…"

Jeremy nodded, "I've been trying to figure out what, but I haven't had any luck."

Rachel made to get up, "Then we'll help."

Jeremy flicked his great tail and gently pushed her down with the tip. "No, my Lady," he said politely. Then his great green eyes scanned the room, landing on Blaine, "I came here only to warn you. The skies may burn, but I know you will come for us to stop it. I want to see if I can figure out the cause by myself before I asked for your help…" he told them.

Blaine glanced at Kurt, "He gets that from you, you know—that hero complex?"

Kurt threw a pillow at him, to which Blaine caught and cuddled close to him, sticking his tongue out childishly. Jeremy chuckled, "Anyway. I only wanted to warn you of the danger. Watch out for it, and be sure to come find me when if it does actually happen. I'm not sure I'll be able to escape Master Theta's old eyes again after this…"

Both Blaine and Kurt got up, rushing to Jeremy before he left, to hug him. The girls looked on fondly, grinning as Jeremy pulled away after a few minutes and linked the two boys' hands together.

"That's better," he replied, and dashed out the wall and back toward William McKinley High School, and the Rift it housed.

Kurt and Blaine looked at their entwined hands, then looked to each other before blushing crimson, but not exactly taking their hands back…

***

"We can't just sit here and wait," Blaine said, now sitting in between Rachel and Quinn. Kurt was pacing, looking somewhat ridiculous in his pajama bottoms and tank-top.

"But Jeremy said nothing was happening… and we can't get through the Rift if  _all_  the dragons are thinking the same things," Quinn replied.

Kurt shook his head and turned to his friends. "There literally is  _nothing_  we can do right now but wait. We need proof, or something relevant to get into the Rift. It's the pact Mom made with the dragons when Alexander tore the damn thing open…"

Rachel nodded, but her head was slowly sinking into her hands. Blaine shook his head again, "We don't even know when its going to happen…" he said. "So we have no way of actually preparing…"

"Yes we do," Kurt replied. "We are prepared to go into the Spirit World at any time. We are prepared to get into the school at any time…"

"But you're the only one with the keys," Quinn pointed out.

Blaine suddenly stood up, "Let's make a schedule…"

The other three stared at him. "A schedule for what?" Kurt asked, back to being somewhat peeved at him. He was under a bit of stress, so Blaine somewhat understood the change of heart.

"We'll start spending the night together, at each other's house," Blaine replied. "Then we can all be together so when this Burning Horizon thing comes along, we can all be with each other just in case it happens on a weekend."

Quinn smiled, "Mercedes has an extra room in her house we can use," she said.

"And from experience, we can use the Oscar Room in our basement," Rachel added.

Blaine nodded, and said, "We'll have an order, and we'll spend the night at a new house every day so our parents don't worry. We'll just say we're working on a group English project, and it's due in a couple of weeks," he said.

Everyone nodded at the idea, and Kurt went to his desk to write out the schedule for the group for the rest of the month, just in case it took a month for the whole peace behind the Rift to blow up…


	11. The Burning Horizon

As it were, it only took a week for all hell to break lose. And it literally looked like hell outside.

Both Kurt and Blaine woke up, convinced that something was happening to their baby, and looked out the window. Since it was Kurt's house, Kurt got to sleep in his own bed, but due to a nine out of ten challenge of rock-paper-scissors, Rachel had won the spot next to him in bed, and Quinn and Blaine were subjected to extra comforters and pillows on the carpeted floor.

Quinn made sure to check for monsters under the bed for Blaine, who was convinced Kurt hid some pretty weird stuff under there ("Hopefully Merlin's not hanging out down there either." "He's  _not_ , Blainey…" "Bugger.").

Kurt went to the window as soon as he could and opened the blinds, making the room glow crimson. Outside, it looked like all hell had broken lose: the skies were covered in what looked like fire, but the town seemed normal enough. Nothing was on fire, it just looked like they were now in the city of Lima, Ohio, but it had moved to a deepest pits of fiery hell.

Rachel and Quinn had been roused from sleep, but were awake as soon as they noticed what was going on. And the four mobilized: rushing into day clothes and getting together backpacks of everything they might need for another journey into the Rift. Rachel even handed out raisin-cinnamon bagels as they hurried onward.

"Rachel, you try to sing to calm the dragons down, if that doesn't work, just come find us in the Rift," Kurt said as they bolted out the front door and down the sidewalk towards WMHS. "Blaine, Quinn and I will be either on our way to the castle, or already there."

He unlocked the door to the school, as it was a Saturday morning (morning? No one could really tell with the blazing inferno above them), and let everyone inside. Rachel immediately began to hum, but when the force behind her song wasn't working, she broke out into every female-sung show-tune she could find in her head. Blaine, Quinn and Kurt found themselves humming along as they traversed the hallways toward locker 113. When they got there, they noticed the dragons behind the opening of the Rift, pouring fire and smoke through it.

Instead of going through the waterfall effect into the Spirit World, Blaine felt like he was going through a block of cooled smoke. The fire didn't have any temperature, but it sure looked freaky. He wondered if  _everyone_  could see what was going on, or if it was still selective only to students and faculty of WMHS. When he looked around, he saw that the sky in the Spirit World was the same as the human world: with a sky doused in temperature-less flames. He looked behind him, trying to grab for Quinn's hand, but she hadn't gone through.

"Wait! Kurt!" he called, "Quinn hasn't come through yet!"

"Leave it! She's in good hands!" Kurt yelled back.

Blaine took one last look at the smoking entrance and ran to catch up with Kurt. As he did, he noticed that after only three steps, they seemed closer to the great, towering castle that had once been in the distance. A few more steps and Kurt was opening the great doors of the moat-less structure.

"Careful… in the Spirit World, we become on the same level as the spirits, so they don't usually drift through us. Meaning you could smack into a spirit just as you can smack into anyone in the hallway on a busy school day," Kurt said as they ran through the halls. "Throne room, throne room, throne room," he chanted nervously, finally taking some stairs.

Kurt had a little less stamina than Blaine, who was on the soccer team, and so he paused at random intervals to catch his breath. At each pause, Blaine would try to get some words in, anything to make the other boy  _relax_ , but Kurt was quick to recover and would only start running again, chanting "Throne room," as he ran.

Finally, they found the largest room in the giant stone castle. Before Kurt went in, though, he caught his breath and turned to Blaine. "Dragons are usually sweet creatures, but I would be careful, as this is the Dragon King, and he seems to be under the spell of something dark. If something happens to me, just run, okay?" Kurt asked. "You find Rachel and Quinn, you three find Jeremy, and you figure out what the hell is going on, all right?"

"Kurt," Blaine said almost feverishly, "I'm not leaving here without you."

"Jeremy doesn't need us anymore, remember? If something happens to me, he'll be fine," Kurt hissed.

But Blaine shook his head, "But  _I_  won't."

Kurt put his hands behind him as he felt the wall. Blaine had him literally against the wall. He felt the other's hands press into the wall as both flattened themselves against it. Blaine continued talking, "I know you want to be the hero, but… But I can't stand the fact that you feel you've got nothing to live for."

"I live for myself," Kurt replied, feeling a bit like a cornered animal. "I don't need to live for anyone else."

The look on Blaine's face made Kurt's stomach churn. Blaine looked like a kicked puppy, and he shook his head again. "And so, because you live for yourself, you're willing to die?"

"If that's that I have to do," Kurt replied.

Blaine stared into the other's blue-grey-green eyes and found himself gravitating towards them. Kurt would have flinched away, but the heat between them had grown immensely and he couldn't tear himself away from Blaine's intense brown eyes. Kurt could feel Blaine's breath against his lips, but before totally closing the gap, Blaine said, "If this doesn't change your mind about who to live for, then I'm sorry in advance…"

And then the gap between them was closed, but only briefly. Once Blaine had pulled away without Kurt getting in edgewise, Kurt threw his arms around Blaine's neck and pulled him in for another kiss, and Blaine allowed the kiss to go on longer than the first one had before pulling away.

"As long as you live, Blaine… I won't die…" Kurt said, grinning impishly at him.

Blaine smiled for the first time that day. "Well then. If that's the case…  _allons-y!_ " he said, making a motion for Kurt to lead them into the throne room.

Kurt moved out from him position of being pinned against the wall and ducked into the room. Blaine followed, marveling at the sheer size of the room. He had never been to Europe, so he never actually seen a ballroom up close before. Of course, Dalton Academy had been pretty posh for a private school, and since they were pretty much east of the Mississippi, the school had a ballroom… but this room was like something out of  _Merlin_  or something.

At the end of the room, though, was an interesting piece of architecture, which looked something like a bed hanging in midair. When Blaine looked closely at it, four tiny dragons were buzzing furiously to keep the bed thing up, for on it was a motionless black dragon, snoozing in the Spirit World sky. "Beautiful, isssssn't it?" collective voices said as Kurt and Blaine watched the sky outside. The voice didn't seem to come from the giant dragon on the bed.

"King Agatone," Kurt said, bowing slightly.

Blaine followed suit, but the old dragon simply sat up, sitting much like a large black dog. "Master Hummel…" Agatone said, smiling. His speech was slow, but then again, if he was the very first dragon, then he must be very,  _very_  old. "I see you have brought your mate…"

"Oh… this is just—" Kurt stopped himself, "Not yet a mate, Your Majesty. But we're getting there," he added, winking over at Blaine, who blushed.

"Ah, young love," King Agatone said, a hint of a smile on his face.

Kurt looked around, "Where is King Zacharias?" he suddenly asked.

"We took him…" the collective hiss said from behind the throne.

Blaine watched in horror as a dark cloud of… something-or-other came out of nowhere and settled itself (themselves?) on the Dragon King's shoulders like a scarf. "He wasss absssolutely… deliccccioussssss…"

"What are you?" Kurt asked, moving in front of Blaine as he spoke.

"Ssssssome call ussss Legion… but we prefer the term… Pandora," the creature(s) hissed, delighted.

Blaine gulped, "Either way you're pretty much viruses…" he said. "Legion is pretty much the Christian version of the Greek story of Pandora's Box."

The Pandora seemed to turn to him. Rather, the little electric looking shock in the black inky darkness of their form sparked in Blaine's general direction. "Precccccisssssely, human toy…" It said, coming close to them both before hissing away from them suddenly.

Absentmindedly, Blaine's hand went up to the silver canary pendent that still hung around his neck. Kurt, he remembered, always wore his mother's engagement ring on his left middle finger, and her wedding band on his right index finger. The bands were made of silver, while the engagement ring's stone was moonstone ("Mom always thought moonstone was lucky, since at one point in time, spirits only came out at night to visit loved ones before the world became industrialized…").

"They took him… ingested him. Just like that," Agatone sniffed.

The Pandora turned to him quickly and hissed, "And we'll do the ssssame to you if you don't  _shut up_."

"Why are you here? Why do you need the Rift to open?" Kurt asked feverishly.

"Chaossssss dear boy…" the Pandora replied. Blaine swore the thing was trying to smile, but it was failing miserably. "We feed of chaosssss. We feed off energy… but asssstral dragon energy is just… not…  _enough_. We need chaossss… and what better chaossss than ssssspirits being sssseen and heard by all of the human population? Not to mention it looking like their very own made-up  _hell_?"

"What… happens when you get your fill of chaos?" Kurt asked, dreading the answer.

" _Everything_  will be resorted to dusssst. Nothing will be sssspared…" the Pandora were now echoing each other, which was creepy in-and-of-itself. "The world will ccceasssse to exxxissst…"

"You can't do that… what will that accomplish?" Blaine asked.

"It'ssss jusssst for fun, dear boy," the Pandora replied, and something akin to a laugh followed the answer.

Blaine was taken aback. He was right, most things in the Rift and that came out of the Rift were either crazy, or sweet. Dragons? Sweet. Pandora? _Freaking Insane_.

Kurt turned around and grabbed Blaine's arm, "Run. We've got to find the others and warn them."

"But the Pandora are right here!" Blaine shouted.

"Run, Blaine. Dammit, do as you're told!" Kurt shouted.

Blaine ran from Kurt, who would have begun to run along side him…

… Had a cage not literally fallen from the ceiling. Kurt was immediately trapped beneath it, and Blaine, hearing the clatter of metal on marble, turned around. "Go!" Kurt shouted when he saw Blaine instinctively step toward him. "Find the girls. Just go!"

"I'm not just going to leave you in here, Kurt!" Blaine shouted.

"Dammit, Blaine," Kurt shouted, clutching at the bars of the cage. "Don't worry about me and save yourself. I… I don't know what I'd do without you…"

"I don't know what I'd do without  _you_ ," Blaine shot back.

"I won't kill him," Agatone said, throwing the Pandora off his shoulders and, with liquid speed for an old-timer, flew off his bed-throne and curled himself around the cage. "The cage is made of silver, which the Pandora fear because of its purity," he said, looking at Blaine, "I would have caught you both to keep you safe… but I only have one. Go, Blaine Anderson. Save the Rift. I will keep your mate safe with me…"

Blaine bit his bottom lip, but went to the dragon and kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry about  _your_  mate, Your Majesty," he said quietly.

Agatone moved a little so Blaine could get to the cage. The King of Dragons hissed at the approaching Pandora. "You are weak, Agatone…" the Pandora hissed. "Taking care of lissssstlessssssss humanssss who would dare defy usssss. Let ussss remind you that  _you_  were the one who releasssed ussss."

"By accident and curiosity," Agatone hissed back, tightening his hold around the cage.

Blaine reached to Kurt through the bars and pushed a stray curl from his face. "I'll come back for you."

"Of course you will," Kurt replied, smiling as he clutched the silver bars. "Find the girls. Find Jeremy. Come back for me, eradicate the Pandora…"

"It sounds so easy…" Blaine replied, chuckling heartbreakingly.

Kurt smiled and put two fingers under his chin, "I love you."

Blaine's eyes widened and he wished the bars of the cage weren't pressed so close together so Blaine could kiss the other boy. Instead, he took the other boy's hand and laced their fingers together for a short moment. "I love you too."

Then Kurt looked to the Dragon King, "Now  _go,_ " he hissed.

Blaine nodded, and escaped the dragon's grip by leaping over his great black tail. He ignored the hissing from the Pandora and ran out the great door, through the hallways, down some stairs, and out the door he and Kurt had entered, out into the outside world with its blazing sky…

***

"It's not working," Rachel said, finishing up 'Part Of Your World' from  _The Little Mermaid_ , "Nothing's worked. I've sang everything in my arsenal from Sondheim to Disney, and the bloody sky is still consumed in flame…"

Quinn wrapped her arms around Rachel, "It's all right… sometimes… sometimes there's something or someone stronger than us out there… Let's go in there and find the boys and try to stop this some other way…"

Rachel blinked back some tears of frustration and nodded, following her girlfriend into the locker. They left it open, and Rachel led the way toward the castle in the distance. It only took the girls about two steps before…

…Blaine ran out, knocking straight into Quinn. His collision caused them both to go down, Blaine's apologies shrill even as he noticed he was falling on top of his best friend. "Shit! I'm sorry, I'm really sorry!"

"Calm down, Blaine!" Quinn said, "I'm fine, I'm fine. What's wrong with you, though? You look like you've seen a ghost!" Blaine gave her a sarcastic stare and she laughed sheepishly, "All right, shut up, Anderson," she replied, rolling her eyes.

"But what happened?" Rachel asked, "And where's Kurt?"

Blaine explained to the girls about everything that had happened since he had left them outside the Rift. He explained about the Pandora, about the cage and about the King's promise to protect Kurt. He left out the kissing part, however. The girls couldn't waste his time screaming and congratulating him about it. As much as Blaine trusted the Dragon King (What? He wasn't burning a hole into the Rift to open it!), he wanted to find Jeremy and  _fast_. There was no telling what the Pandora could do to the Spirit world, the human world… and most of all to Kurt and Rachel and Quinn and his sister and—

"All right… where is that blasted son of yours?" Quinn asked, looking up in the sky. She covered her eyes against the blaze above them and sighed.

"No… Quinn and I will go in to the castle to find out some clues… as long as we stay out of sight to the Pandora, and away from the throne room, we'd have better chances…" Rachel said, going to push the door open.

Suddenly, darkness seeped out of the cracked door, but it was too late for Rachel to instinctively slam it again. The world seemed to black out for Blaine, who yelled out into the darkness, but nothing came out of it. They were trapped in the inky dark. And hope was shattered.

***

"Oh, shit!" Quinn called out. She suddenly felt a warm hand enclose around hers. At the contact, she could suddenly see the other person, and she smiled. "Rachel…"

Rachel smiled at her, "Wow… this is like nothing that's ever happened. I can't see anything else… and only when I reached out and touched you could I actually see you…"

Quinn looked around her, her lower lip quivering. "Are we… are we going to die here, Rachel?" she suddenly asked.

Rachel glanced at her, her face full of worry for the other girl, "No, Quinn, Quinn, Quinn Fabray," she said, putting her free arm around the other girl and pulling her close. Quinn began shaking and crying, and soon her knees gave out and she pulled them both to the ground.

Rachel, now sitting on the cold ground, wrapped her arms protectively around her girlfriend and held her for a moment, murmuring to her that everything was going to be all right. She realized that, to some people, darkness and despair often came together. She herself was feeling pretty low as she sat there, spouting almost hypocritical things to Quinn. They were hypocritical in that Rachel hardly believed a word of it.

So the darkness around them wasn't just Darkness. It was Despair and Fear and… Chaos. Hadn't the Pandora wanted this? Was the Darkness going to spread out the opened Rift and into the world?

Rachel sighed. It was starting: the Pandora's world order of Chaos and Destruction. It was beginning, and Rachel was trapped in it. Kurt was missing, and Blaine was out there, probably feeling the same dread and sadness she and Quinn were feeling.

"Forget it," Rachel said. "We're doomed."

***

Blaine felt like he had hit his head. The pain spread through his whole body, and yet somehow, he felt numb. He glanced around him, but he could only see himself. Everything else was black. Not even inky midnight blue. Just pitch black. Isolation. Loneliness. Despair. He felt all of these things, and yet, he knew there was something he needed to do. A glimmer of something. He looked around him, twitching as he did, waiting for something.

Then he felt it. There was someone out there. "Hello!" he called out. "Hello?"

"No need to shout, Mama," a faint, faraway voice said.

Blaine saw flames in the distance and ran toward them, "Jeremy!" he called.

He ran for a long time, he thought, until he came to the end of the darkness, quite literally. He stopped, expecting a cliff, but then he noticed where he was. He was in the castle, on the parapets of a tower, looking down into the Darkness he had just come out of. Jeremy was up there with him, his head crooked. Blaine threw his arms around him.

"Let me guess… you're about  _twenty_  in human years now," he asked when he had stepped away and had given his son the once-over.

"Just about," Jeremy replied, giving him a rather nice dragon-grin.

"You're forgetting all about me," said another voice. It was higher pitched and rather lovely sounding.

Blaine turned and saw a woman who was taller than him, with soft brown hair braided at odd intervals and green-grey-blue eyes.  _Blaine had seen her before_ , and was shocked when she gave him a smile that sent shivers down his spine. "I'm Holly Hummel."

"I know," Blaine replied, wide-eyed.


	12. Finale - Pandora's Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Used: "Hello Beautiful" by Vic Mignogna  
> "Je N'ai Pas De Mots (I Don't Have The Words)" by Vic Mignogna  
> "The Word Of Your Body (Reprise)" from Spring Awakening (just a little bit).

_Rachel sighed. It was starting: the Pandora's world order of Chaos and Destruction. It was beginning, and Rachel was trapped in it. Kurt was missing, and Blaine was out there, probably feeling the same dread and sadness she and Quinn were feeling._

" _Forget it," Rachel said. "We're doomed."_

Quinn blinked at her girlfriend's sudden dead tone. She was now confused, her insides tingling with the feeling of despair, but there was something else there. She remembered something that Kurt had said to her:

" _We see this stuff every day. So we're used to it. You… you and Blaine are not. So you'll have different feelings from us about things. Go with those feelings… please. That's why we need you two. You're fresh eyes, and fresh senses…"_

Quinn suddenly didn't believe Rachel. She pulled out of her embrace and shook her head. "We can't be. That doesn't feel right. I feel… I feel… Hope…" she said.

Rachel looked at her, her eyes dead. She had seen too much of this world, too much Chaos. Quinn shook her head. "Don't you know the story of Pandora's box? The little girl and boy looked back into the box and a little fairy named Hope came out. For every bad thing there is good…" Quinn said. As she spoke, she felt her Glow coming to her—slowly growing out of her. She smiled into Rachel's dead eyes, "You need to hope, babe…" she said.

Rachel's eyes widened as feeling came through them, and Quinn saw her reflection in the dark brown eyes and saw that the Glow was… was chasing away the Darkness. "Quinn… do you know that Hope and Love are the two most powerful emotions a psychic can have?" Rachel asked.

Quinn looked at her glowing skin, "It's starts with this little light of mine…"

"Let it shine," Rachel said, grinning at the dopey joke she had just made.

Quinn was about to laugh when Rachel grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her into a deep kiss. Quinn kissed back, confused at first. This wasn't their first kiss or anything, but there was passion on Rachel's end that spread through Quinn, making her Glow brighter and brighter. Quinn pressed down, hoping her end of the kiss would chase away the Darkness even farther. It only helped a little.

Since they were only human, they broke apart from the kiss, disappointment flashing behind Rachel's eyes as she found that only the spot where they were sitting was brightening (they could see the grass and a bit of the door to the castle). Quinn glanced at the door. It seemed the castle was safe from the Darkness surrounding it… If only they could just get in…

Quinn stood up and helped Rachel to her feet, "Come on… seems the Dragon Castle is safe from this stuff…"

"I love you," Rachel suddenly said, still clutching Quinn's hand.

Quinn flushed. They hadn't expressed that to one another yet… "I love you too," she said, kissing the other girl tenderly. "Now let's go. I hate to see you despair so much. It's really creepy…"

***

_Blaine turned and saw a woman who was taller than him, with soft brown hair braided at odd intervals and green-grey-blue eyes. Blaine had seen her before, and was shocked when she gave him a smile that sent shivers down his spine. "I'm Holly Hummel."_

" _I know," Blaine replied, wide-eyed._

Holly smiled, "I know you know."

Jeremy sighed, "No need to get snippy, Grammy…" he sighed.

Holly sighed a few minutes later in response to Jeremy's, "It's really strange to be a grandmother when I died at 33."

Blaine sighed, "Blame the kid. It was really weird to become a father at 16…" Blaine replied. He put his hand out. "I finally get to shake the hand of the woman who birthed that wonderful boy…"

Holly's smile widened, "I've been watching you, Blaine Anderson," she said, putting out her hand.

Blaine retracted it, a goofy grin on his face, "That's a bit creepy, ma'am," he said.

Holly laughed, quite liking this boy, "I can't help it. Looking after my son means that you're in almost every shot now too… along with Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray…"

Blaine grabbed the woman's hand and shook it, glad that he could in this world, at least. "Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Hummel."

"Please, if you're the mother of my son's child you can call me Holly. We've reached that point…" she said, crooking her head. She really did look like Kurt with her lovely smile and bright eyes. "Now… Jeremy tells me you're here on his orders?"

"Pandora," Blaine replied, his serious face on now. "They've all ready started the Chaos process…"

"Creepy little demons," Jeremy muttered, shuddering.

Holly sighed, her own smile fading slightly. "I know…"

Blained leaned over the battlements into the Darkness below, "Quinn and Rachel are still down there…"

Holly sighed, "I'm sure they're fine. Quinn hasn't seen so much yet, so her Hope will certainly make that Glow of hers intensify. They'll get safely back into the castle. Now… I think I have some information for the both of you to help you defeat the Pandora," she said.

Blaine turned back to her, and she suddenly saw a flash of something. She put her hand on Blaine's chest, fingering the canary. "Kurt gave you my first anniversary present…" she said, her voice now far away.

"Rachel did, actually. Suzy Pepper caught me off guard, and… that's how Rachel and I met… and how all this actually kinda started," Blaine said, putting his hand up to fiddle with it as Holly moved her hand away instinctively. "That's when I first saw you, Mrs.—Holly."

Holly smiled sadly, "Yes. Kurt would have never actually given it away… he's much too attached to me."

"Is that… why you don't visit them on Halloween?"

"He needs to move on," Holly replied, moving so that she was looking out into the Darkness around them. She shook her head, "Nothing I've done helped. I would have gone to warn Rachel and Kurt that one time, but I sent out 'Xander instead. I avoid leaving the Rift for Halloween so Kurt won't pine and forget… and I sent Jeremy to you so that you two would move close to one another and he'd stop sabotaging relationships because of me…"

Blaine blinked, "You dropped Jeremy off with me?" he asked, instinctively taking the dragon's leathery humanoid hand.

Holly smiled mischievously behind her at him, her brown-gold hair blowing a bit in an odd breeze that seemed to come through the Darkness. "We'll just say that I was a bit of a matchmaker in my youth. Gregory and Oliver Berry would have never gotten together without my help," she replied, tapping her nose. "I believed in human rights for all way back then…" she looked back out over the Darkness, "And I was proud when Kurt came out when he was young…"

Blaine joined her, "You were brave, helping both gays and straights out back then. And then putting your talents into keeping McKinley safe…" he said.

"Kurt might have taken my teachings too far," she replied, smiling sadly.

"Yeah… but he's getting better," Blaine replied. He seriously hoped she hadn't been spying on him when he had kissed Kurt…

"You're letting your thoughts wander, Anderson," Holly said, tapping his nose. "Naughty, naughty Blaine…" she added, grinning maniacally.

 _Shit_. But Blaine liked Holly Hummel. She was kind and brave and funny. Like Rachel and Quinn, who Blaine seriously hoped were all right.

"They are," Holly replied, touching the boy's cheek.

"I'm never going to get used to that," Blaine replied.

"Kurt has learned not to pry," Holly reminded, "Speaking of which… the information you need to get past the Pandora and get rid of the Chaos before its too late?"

"Right," Jeremy replied, moving forward, "All information is welcomed. I could find nothing…"

"That's because you don't know where to look," Holly replied. "You stick with me, Jeremy. Grammy can teach you many useful things…"

"When this is all over, I may transfer over to you as my lawful guardian, then," Jeremy replied, winking. Holly gave him a fond smile.

She turned to Blaine, "Silver."

"Silver?" Blaine asked.

"Silver?" Jeremy repeated.

They both looked at the woman incredulously. She smiled, "Remember Suzy Pepper? Well… poltergeist's are kin to the Pandora, only its like the Pandora cross-breeded so much that poltergeist's just got all of the genetic mutations. Know what I mean?" she asked.

"Why doesn't Kurt talk like this?" Blaine asked, slapping his forehead, "You're wonderful, Holly!"

"Coming from a gay man, that makes me feel really great," Holly said, "Thank you."

"'Welcome," Blaine replied, winking and grinning brilliantly.

"Anyway, the Pandora hate silver because it is the most pure of the metals, and they are not pure creatures," Holly told them. "King Agatone, in his old age, accidently knocked over a box that has been in his possession since the ancient Greeks…"

"Pandora's Box," Blaine and Jeremy breathed, looking at each other.

Holly nodded, "Yes… and only a powerful combination of Glow and Song will get the entire body to return there…" Holly said.

Blaine froze. "Rachel and Quinn," he said, eyes wide as he stared at Kurt's mother.

Holly nodded, "I really should be telling all four of you about this…" she suddenly mused, biting her lower lip a little.

Jeremy suddenly hunched, "I can feel Dad. He's with the girls and King Agatone. The Pandora are keeping faraway from Kurt since he's in a silver cage."

Holly put her hand to her heart, "Dear me, my poor baby," she said. "Those Pandora are tricky. Even though Blaine is wearing silver, I'm not, and Jeremy isn't either. We'd be in a lot of danger…" she explained.

Jeremy thought for a moment. "Ever ridden a dragon, Grammy?" he asked, looking from Holly to Blaine and crooking a reptilian eyebrow.

Holly grinned, "Never. But then again, I've never had to."

Blaine blinked, "I'm about to ride a dragon. Just like  _How To Train Your Dragon_ … only I have a better name than the main character."

Jeremy and Holly raised their eyebrows at him, but Blaine shrugged as Jeremy flattened himself on the stone parapet, allowing Holly to gently mount him, sitting as if she was in an English saddle. Blaine got up behind her, and Jeremy gently stood, taking off, around the tower, and into the large window that was under the parapet they had been standing on just moments before.

***

"Kurt!" Rachel yelled, finding a gap in between the great Dragon King's claws to run to her friend. "What's gotten into you, Your Majesty?"

Quinn's eyes widened at the sight of the dragon, but he chuckled good-naturedly, "Go with your mate, child. Kurt can come to no harm when he's within the bars of silver. So pure compared to the demons I accidently uncovered."

"Agatone accidently knocked over Pandora's Box a couple weeks ago. The Pandora ingested King Zacharias, and then fed off Agatone's despair until they managed to take over his brain. Seeing… seeing the romantic bond between Blaine and me revived Agatone," Kurt explained, blushing.

"I'll make you tell me about that 'romantic bond' despite our 'don't kiss and tell' rule later… Blaine and I were separated in the Darkness outside… the Pandora started the attack all ready, Kurt. If it wasn't for Quinn here… I would have lost all Hope," Rachel said, taking Quinn's hand.

"Hmm… I think I'll have to ask about  _your_  romantic bond despite our 'don't kiss and tell' rule…" Kurt replied, waggling his eyebrows at his best friend.

"I hope your mate is all right," King Agatone said suddenly, sniffing the air, "I think I smell him… and his child… and the child's grandmother."

"Blaine's parents are still alive, though," Kurt said. Then he blinked, "Oh crap…"

Rachel and Quinn chuckled, but then gasped as they heard a 'whoosh' overhead, followed by childish laughter coming from a male source and a female source. Rachel looked up, tapping Quinn and then Kurt as she saw that Jeremy had swooped in from one of the darkened windows, Blaine and lovely woman on his back. Jeremy touched down, laughing along with his mother as Blaine slid off and (like the gentlemen he was) helped the lady down.

Kurt tuned out the woman for a minute, only happy that Blaine was safe and alive. And Jeremy, he cared that Jeremy was alive and well too. But Blaine was a little more important to him right that minute.

"Kurt!" Blaine said, rushing up to him and trying to hug him through the bars. When that didn't work, Kurt offered him his cheek, and Blaine kissed it. Kurt grabbed Blaine's hands and kissed the tops of both of them, before moving on to the palms. He was about to kiss Blaine up one of his arms when he finally noticed the woman behind Blaine, who was smiling knowingly and showing off very familiar teeth. "Mom?" he asked, now quite embarrassed.

"Oh, don't mind your mother. Just focus on the mother of your child…" Holly said, "It's okay, really. I hardly paid attention to my parents when you were born and I was done apologizing with your father for yelling at him about making me go through childbirth. I was so infatuated with your father that they had to leave the room."

"TMI," all four teens said, and Agatone only smiled, nodding in appreciation to the tale.

Jeremy came forward, "Can't you release Papa now, your majesty? The humans are wearing silver jewelry, so they can better traverse the castle and find the box. Lady Quinn has the Glow, and Lady Rachel has the Song," he added, giving a meaningful look to the 'Ladies.'

"Thank goodness," Agatone said, his serpentine body moving around the cage. He tapped the ground, and his four servant dragons lifted the cage. Kurt ran to Blaine and Blaine swept him up in a hug, kissing him fiercely on the mouth once, then twice then—

Holly coughed, "All right, all right. We get it. Get a room."

"Mom!" Kurt said, but didn't move from his spot entwined in Blaine's arms. He seemed a little stand-off-ish to Holly, actually.

There was a stifling silence in the throne room before Holly finally cleared her throat and said, "Come on, Kurtie. I only avoided seeing you so that you would forget about me. It was a terrible idea, because I know it hurt you and it hurt Burt, but… I sent little Jeremy out to fix things…"

"You ran away. Even though you tried to fix things up with Jeremy. And I thank you… for him. He's patched my life up in so many good ways… but I'm still angry with you," Kurt replied.

Blaine glanced down at him, "She's proud of you. For being who you are…" he said. "We talked, before this," he said, looking over at Holly, "You're mother is sorry, Kurt. But she tried to make things up for herself. And she did a lot of cool things: sending me Jeremy and watching out for us even though she never visited on Halloween…"

Kurt looked up at him, then at his mother. There was silence again, and Rachel nervously looked to the door. Then she began to sweat, and Quinn noticed, as their hands were linked. She looked where her girlfriend was looking, and her eyes turned in panic to Kurt and his mother.

Kurt let go of Blaine, finally, and ran to his mother, his eyes glazed with tears as he hugged her, "You're forgiven, Mommy. I missed you so much…"

"There, there, Kurtie. Mommy's here," Holly replied, her maternal instinct kicking in again.

There was a hiss from the entrance, and the sound of an whole audience clapping. Kurt and Blaine spun toward the doorway, and saw the shadowy, sparking form of the Pandora, grinning with just a mouth and no eyes: just teeth and sparks and shadows. It was frightening. "How ssssweet… But never lasssting…" it breathed.

Agatone and Jeremy made to get in front of the humans, but Quinn and Rachel looked to one another and then to the dragons to stop them. "What ever do you mean?" Rachel asked, stepping forward. Quinn followed her, a slight smile on her face.

"You humanssss aren't lassssting very long out in our wonderful darknessssss," the Pandora sneered. They had no idea what was coming.

Quinn pecked her girlfriend on the cheek, whispering quickly, "I love you…" and as she did, she smiled and the Glow grew from her body, emanating warmly to everyone in the room, including the Pandora, who had stopped hissing, enraptured with the glowing woman.

Then they snapped out of it for a minute, "Your trickssss are pretty, little lady. But you musssssst have the Glow  _and_  the Ssssssssssong to capture usssss…" it sneered.

Rachel sneered back, "Watch your mouths, Pandora. You're getting your wish…"

She opened her mouth and began:

" _Hello my beautiful_  
It seems I just can't stay away  
It's been so very long  
That I've felt anything this strong…"

"Where is the box?" Kurt hissed to Agatone as Rachel sang. "We'll need the box to trap them. I'm sure Rachel and Quinn can hold them, but—"

"We'll get it," Jeremy said, nodding to Holly. Agatone nodded and the three disappeared as Rachel staved off the Pandora, still singing:

" _You hold my heart the way you did an hour ago  
I've said all I can say and yet I must be sure you know_

 _That I love love love you_  
I need need need you  
I long long long to hold you in my arms again  
I'm so so sad to  
Ever hurt hurt hurt you  
I'm more afraid of losing you than anything before  
Find More lyrics at .com

_Heeeeey yey yeah oh…  
Ooo-oh oh…_

_I love love love you_  
I need need need you  
I long long long to hold you in my arms again  
I'm so so sad to  
Ever hurt hurt hurt you  
And I'm more afraid of losing you than anything before  
Please can I have one more hello…"

The dragons and Holly returned right as Rachel finished. Rachel gave a panicked look at Kurt, who was making gestures at her to keep singing. She sighed, after the last breath, watching as the Pandora began squirming and hissing: the Glow could only do so much. She squeezed Quinn's hand, giving her a small, sad smile before she opened her mouth to sing again:

" _Come near and stand by me, baby._  
Close enough to reach out and pull you still closer,  
All that is swelling within me,  
Must be a language I've never spoken Till there was you,  
I fumbled try but I stumbled,  
Over all my heart wants to say now…"

"Must be a Vic Mignogna kind of day," Kurt muttered, watching as Rachel and Quinn moved the Pandora towards the box. The shadowy spirit was struggling against being shut in again, but Kurt and Blaine moved to the box and picked it up, actually having to handle the Pandora to get it (them?) inside the box.

It took some effort, but Rachel kept singing, and soon, everyone else joined her:

" _Je n'ai pas de mots,_  
Nothing seems to say the way you move me,  
Rushing through me,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
But a promise has been made you can believe this,  
From the first kiss,  
It's good that I don't have to speak to know that it's real,  
Je n'ai pas de mots.

 _Come near and talk to me baby,_  
How did you know you were,  
The dream of this dreamer,  
Oh god how I thank you for reading,  
In my heart the note I didn't even Know that I wrote  
Of what I long for,  
You gave me much more,  
Love is standing beside me,

 _Je n'ai pas de mots,_  
Nothing seems to say the way you move me,  
Rushing through me,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
But a promise has been made you can believe this,  
From the first kiss,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
Oh! Nothing seems to say the way you move me,  
Rushing through me,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
But a promise has been made you can believe this,  
From the first kiss,  
It's good that I don't have to speak to know that it's real,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
Je n'ai pas de mots,  
Je n'ai pas de mots…"

The Pandora was safely inside the box by the end of the song. Quinn looked exhausted, but Rachel held her up. They presented the box to Agatone, who smiled at them as the Spirit World sunlight shone through the throne room windows, signaling the danger was over. He took the box, threw it up in the air, let out a great breath of fire, and incinerated the box.

"I don't know why anyone did that in the beginning…" Agatone quipped. "You will still have your human diseases… but at least Chaos won't reign supreme in either of our worlds…"

Everyone clapped and cheered, and Rachel and Kurt nodded at each other: it was time to go home.

***

"You go on ahead," Kurt said as they closed the door to locker number 113. He yanked at Blaine's hand, "Not you. Girls, why don't we celebrate with a  _Torchwood_  marathon—second season, preferably—and some pizza and coffee at my house?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

The girls raised their eyebrows, using their free hands to clink together imaginary glasses ("To Destiny!") before they nodded, "Don't take too long. You know I want to get my Jack/Ianto on," Quinn said. "Hey Rach? Isn't Puck still Captain Jack Harkness?"

"Let's hope David 'Ianto' Karofsky sticks around and doesn't get gassed," Rachel replied as they turned down the hall and turned a corner before disappearing to the outside world.

Kurt tugged Blaine in the opposite direction, taking them along the stabilized Rift and then turning a corner. Blaine looked up, "No Rift here…" he pointed out.

Kurt smiled, "Not that I don't trust the dragons not to watch but—" he pinned Blaine to the lockers behind him and closed the gap between their lips fiercely, like Blaine would disappear if Kurt's mouth wasn't enclosed tightly around the other's.

When they came up for air, Blaine's eyebrows raised. "You want me bad, Kurt Hummel…"

"What gave it away, genius?" Kurt asked, and kissed him softly again before grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the lockers. "I hope that left a bruise."

"For what?"

"Must I quote  _Spring Awakening_? Be the Hanschen to your Ernst?" Kurt asked.

"You? Sing to me? Please and thank you," Blaine said, a needy whine in his voice; Kurt couldn't tell if it was real of feigned.

But Kurt smirked in Blaine's direction, stopped him in his tracks, grabbed his other hand, and sang:

" _O, I'm gonna be wounded  
O, I'm gonna be your wound…"_

Blaine immediately began singing with him, as the original actors had. Kurt looked put off that he had been resorted the Ernst's part instead of Blaine, but he got into it, glad to be singing with his 'mate'—as King Agatone had put it.

_"O, I'm gonna bruise you  
O, you're gonna be my bruise…"_

_O, you're gonna be wounded_  
O, I'm gonna be your wound  
O, you're gonna bruise too  
O, I'm gonna be your bruise…"

Kurt kissed him again, and Blaine chuckled when they pulled away a few short seconds later. "All right… we better go. The girls will get impatient and we'll never hear the end of it."

"All right, babe," Kurt replied, smiling giddily as he unlatched his other hand and they fell into step, swinging their clasped hands as they walked down the hall and out into the world.

The sky looked so lovely, even though it looked like rain… grey-and-white clouds were better than red-orange-and-yellow clouds…


End file.
